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THE TALE OF OUR 
MERCHANT SHIPS 


“As for those who say that men did but use the wind 
as an instrument for crossing the sea, and that sails were 
mere machines to them, either they have never sailed or 
they were quite unworthy of sailing. It is not an acci- 
dent that the tall ships of every age of varying fashions 
so arrested human sight and seemed so splendid. The 
whole of man went into their creation, and they ex- 
pressed him very well; his cunning and his mastery, and 
his adventurous heart.’—H1LartrE BELioc, On a Great 
Wind. 


fHE Lic ReRy 
if the 
HAIYERSITY OF ILLINOIS 


ON THE NEW YorK WATERFRONT, ABOUT 1840. 


THE TALE OF OUR 
MERCHANT SHIPS 


BY 
CHARLES E. CARTWRIGHT 


With Illustrations from Drawings 
by the Author 


NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
681 FirrH AVENUE 


Copyright, 1924 
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 


All rights reserved 


Printed in the United States of America 


; 
a 


Corw Wh Aw ow 245 Me Cire 


PREFACE 


HIS book, as its title implies, endeavors to describe 
the agencies which have contributed to place the 
United States among the great seafaring nations. Our 
people, including the later accessions, derive in over- 
whelming majority from stocks which back through all 
the ages have made maritime history. Bringing to the 
first settlement of the country a heritage of aptitude for 
the sea, the pioneers turned at once to its exploitation, 
with an energy that did not fail to arouse the attention, 
and finally the concern, of the parent-nations, which saw 
in it a menace to their maritime interests. With daunt- 
less tenacity and daring, in the teeth of obstacles that 
would have discouraged a feebler breed, they fared sea- 
ward in quest of ever-growing trade, in ships that asked 
no odds from any rivals. 

After the stress and trial of the first thirty years of 
the young Republic, an era of expansion began, to cul- 
minate by the middle of the nineteenth century in a fleet 
which, backed by the records of its performances, might 
fairly claim the leadership of the maritime world. Sea- 
faring and agriculture were at this time the basic indus- 
tries of the American people, and in the former pursuit 
most of the great fortunes of the day were acquired, 


Vii 


974133 


\ 


Vill PREFACE 


bringing into the country capital, which to a degree 
hardly realized at present, served to found the great in- 
dustrial expansion of later years. 

Then our people, for causes which are now coming to 
be recognized as natural and inevitable, turned from the 
active pursuit of foreign seafaring to undertake the 
titanic task of opening up and organizing the vast in- 
terior of the country. Absorbed in the imperative labors 
and exactions of domestic struggles, they gave little 
attention to voices which were raised from time to time, 
to call their attention to the constant dwindling of the 
deep-sea fleet that still rode under our flag. 

At the time of the Spanish War; again during the Boer 
War, when our British cousins were forced to divert much 
of their shipping from the usual trade routes; once more 
when our battleships, circling the world, had to depend 
on foreign tonnage to keep them provided with fuel, 
thoughtful men among us were deeply concerned at the 
maritime situation. 

But the explosion of 1914 jarred the nation into an 
attitude of attention to the inadequacy of its resources 
on the sea. By the time it became necessary to take a 
hand in the great conflict, the people had become thor- 
oughly aroused by the looming gravity of the demand 
for ships, and the close of hostilities found us with a 
deep-sea fleet in being, or under construction, which by 
1920 counted some eight million tons of modern mer- 
chant shipping, brought into existence under the lash 
of war, and unprovided with commercial equipment 
abroad of the sort which results from normal growth in 
times of peace. Can this shipping be incorporated into 
the fabric of our business and industrial structure? Any 


PREFACE 1X 


attempt to answer this question in its political and finan- 
cial bearings would be presumptuous here, even if the 
scope of the volume did not forbid it. It would raise a 
myriad of debatable issues which are changing their 
aspect from day to day, so that any opinions that might 
be advanced would already be of doubtful value by the 
date of publication. 

The purpose here has been to emphasize the fact that 
at all times the urge to the sea has been apparent in the 
American people: to visualize the ships they have created 
—to deal with the sequences and origins, which taken 
in their entirety, make up our maritime history—right 
up to the present time. 

In dealing with ships, rigs, and models, many mu- 
seums and collections have been visited and studied, 
both here and abroad. Material has been gathered and 
compared, and wherever doubts might arise, the most 
authentic sources available have been consulted in the 
endeavor to select facts and figures of unquestioned 
authority. Sketches have been made, often from origi- 
nals difficult of access. Finally, the author has drawn 
upon a personal relation with ships and seafaring people 
during a number of years. 

~The manful part that our compatriots have played— 
their direct lineage, including the great majority of the 
later accessions, with the sailor-peoples of history—form 
the strongest warrants for confidence in our future on 
the sea. 


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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
I. SAILORS WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG. . . I 

Si ELARDY SAILORS) OF THE NORTH) 0) 3) a 
III. THe ARGOSIES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY . 40 


IV. THE STUART AND GEORGIAN MERCHANT SHIPS 59 


V. CoLONIAL MARITIME BEGINNINGS . . . . 79 
Vib Tae eV ARINERS ‘OF SALEM od leo fi) ante 
VII. THe TRADE-SHIPS OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO .. 125 

VIII. THe SEABOARD CITIES, 1820-1860 . . . . 146 
Peele INORTH ATLANTION PACKETS wie yO g65 

X. THE WHALEMEN OF NEw ENGLAND. . . . 183 
roe ORY CLIPPER HIPS) 6h eae i ae QOr 
Pe DH LAKE ANDORIVER MEN Wo Ook a eae 

XIII. THe Passinc oF THE SAILING SHIP. . . . 233 
XIV. THE GREAT NEw FLEET OF THE WAR-TIME . . 250 


owe bat LRADE-SHIPS OF. LO-DAY: cota seen 263 


xi 


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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


ON THE NEW YoRK WATERFRONT, ABOUT 1840 . . . Frontispiece 
PAGE 
EGYPTIAN SHIPPING ON THE ANCIENT NILE ...... 5 
BeDeRSE OE ENTECONTER eal hile hia ear eer ra Mas Re a 
Eee RE “VARY TRIREMED able, Qh eh Sow 8) 10 ae AON aS 
A RoMAN MERCHANT SHIP (ABOUT A.D. 200) . . . . . . I3 
SOME DETAILS OF ANCIENT SHIPS, RESEMBLING SOME MODERN 

FEATURES . . BOG PA ESAs Babe ea Oman okie ita i 
THE ““GoGsTAD SHIP”? RESTORED. . . Pails Wat Nae eee 
AN ENGLISH SHIP OF THE THIRTEENTH GuNrirys: dee Wey Or ets 
A THIRTEENTH CENTURY VENETIAN SHIP . , . . .. . 27 
““THESE WERE THE FirST LIGHTHOUSES”. . par ear ss 29 
AN ASTROLABE OF THE TYPE USED BY Corumavs ale dnl trembeteg PAGS 
INSTRUMENTS USED BY THE EARLY DEEP-SEA NAVIGATORS. . . 43 
Ie EN TI (RN TUIRN SHEDS ail rir (a geen o beta eh Lud ead Oo HURT alk ea 
STEERING AN ELIZABETHAN SHIP , . . ... - 46 
Bebtselrion PISNACH AND (rALLEON ory acto. bla ela dolce 51 
MEIDETCH, cLORD 5 fe. +5 , StL ahalats arene Oak 
AFTERPART OF A LARGE MERCHANTMAN,. ABOUT Mey RACK SEEN 3 4 
EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY DuTcH INDIAMEN. .. . 71 
CUTTER AND LUGGER, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY . . . . . . 75 
TYPES OF RIGS AND VESSELS COMMON IN COLONIAL Days . .. . 81 
AT GLOUCESTER THE FIRST SCHOONERS WERE BUILT, . . 85 
‘“THE ROUGH SEAPORT TOWNS SWARMED WITH SAILORS, RIGGERS, 

AND KINDRED ARTISANS” . . . nad Latha eet tet need 
HULL-PROFILES OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN VESSELS a ed eS 
‘VENOMOUS PIRATES OUT OF SALLEE AND MOGADOR” . . 105 
THE OLD-TIME MERCHANTS WATCHED THE OFFING FOR INCOMING 

RE Om A tee Berge ty foo Nahi. gd III 
A FAsT AND FAMOUS SALEM PRIVATEER OF 1812—THE AMERICA TA TIO 
SALEM SHIPS IN HARBOR, ABOUT 1800 . .. . . AMERY bY 
A CRACK AMERICAN EAsT INDIAMAN OF A HUNDRED YEARS Aco 129 
DIAGRAM SHOWING SPARS AND RIGGING ON A LARGE SHIP’S MAIN- 

MACE PENE MIL 2 Vy Sts) | 5 0 Hielhl wale, Wolfie Vem muy ey LOS 


xiii 


XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 
** BOARDING ‘THE ‘ORESTACK) (la ti.c' ty potiatenie ae) pnd cae ae 
DuGram ror TACKING SBIR i coerce ay eee ie ee 
LOADING SHIPS AT A GULF PORT, BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR . .. .. 155 
BOARDING-HOUSE RUNNERS ... . hry yas 159 
‘‘LISTENED SPELLBOUND TO THEIR YARNS OF INDIA AND THE SouTH 
SBA VISLANDS/71').;5: (ohare tse ke Ap er a oes 8 Rae a 
OLD-TIME PACKET-SHIPS MEETING AT SEA ... . . . . 167 
AN EARLY STEAMGHIP)1.5 55. AUC een iret ons aL Set ny ar Roe 
SAILING DAY. . . : 2 fiw Neer hw aN alae Rm aan ad ages 
‘‘A FLARE WAS ALWAYS Carmien INTHE (WAIST Ve eee. 7 
A PACKET-SHIP OF VTHE "FIFTIES (3°. SS 404A 6 ae ee BL 
AN EARLY WHALING SLOOP. . 2 WOOD gees 185 
A “SPOUTER’”’ ON THE RBMISG Grounns ot hg dic a itl ad Oren Ce 
A “‘NANTUCKET SLEIGH-RIDE” . ~% gc ate gn OE 
cone eae nea ON AN OLD-TIME WHALESHIP ant ee OS 
A CLIPPER SHIP COMPARED WITH A TYPICAL VESSEL OF THE PRE- 
CLIPPER PERIOD 6. (00), bo \ act hee A tee Come, BO 
CLIPPERS RACING THROUGH THE TRADES FAN ety eis 
SINGLE AND DouBLE Top-SAIL R1ics ON NINETEENTH CENTURY 
GHIPS/ UO Tie to eae ? eras tel eat elle wee eee 
BYGONE TYPES ON THE GuEar LAKES Stohr ears 1 ote, A eae ier ae 
‘‘BROADHORN’’ FLATBOATMEN ON THE MISSISSIPPI. . . tye 15, 
ABOVE: AN EARLY MISSISSIPPI RIVER PACKET, ABOUT 1835. 
BELow: AN UP-TO-DATE RIVER STEAMBOAT AT THE LEVEE. 229 
A‘uTRANS-PACIFIC, MAatL-LINERNOF 1867 lois Piel ae eee ee 
A WoopEN FORE-AND-AFTER, AND A STEEL SQUARE-RIGGER OF THE 
NINETIES 4\G eyes et Uses aie est Ue 1 Rand rie ha eR 
AN AMERICAN COASTING LINER, 1900 oy omy tah a ae a 242 
A LAKE ORE-SHIP DISCHARGING CARGO. . .... . 248 
In A WAR-TIME SHIPYARD. .. . 5 Tea Rs 253 
ONE OF THE FABRICATED SHIPS OF 5350 DEap- WEIGHT TONS 250 
ABOVE: ARRANGEMENTS OF BULKHEADS ON AN OIL-TANKER. 
BELow: A BETHLEHEM-BUILT ORE-AND-OIL SHIP. 77205 
A CRAMP-BUILT MoToR-SHIP OF 12,375 TONS AND A SECTIONAL 
DIAGRAM SHOWING CARGO-SPACE AND FUEL-OIL STORAGE OF A 
Motor-sHIp. . . BAA it AY eas 2 aR Ue Bee ir 
A ‘535”’ IN THE PANAMA CANAL Can ke nl ap owen ea tan {fs § 
AN OIL-FIRED SHIP BEING SUPPLIED WITH FUEL A WPA et Sieh L.A dig, 


THE TALE OF OUR 
MERCHANT SHIPS 


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THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT 
SHIPS 


CHAPTER I 
SAILORS WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 


N the memories of our youth we shall all of us find 
evidence enough that man has remained a web-footed 
animal. He begins very young to find prodigious amuse- 
ment in paddling about the shores or the river banks, in 
launching little boats, in wading, or learning to swim. 
Was there ever a healthy lad who was not keen to get 
into a boat, to go rowing, or sailing, or fishing? With 
these little voyages his young imagination connects the 
tales he hears or reads about pirates and discoveries, 
about adventure on the sea, with its mystery and ro- 
mance. Then if he lives near a seaport, or on the lakes, 
or even near a river, he is sure to be interested in the 
boats he sees, the ships, the steamers, or fishing vessels, 
and in the manly business of handling them. 

To the American boy this interest is part of his heri- 
tage. He comes of seafaring stock, with a proud and 
stirring history of ocean activities. Even when his home 
is inland, the instinct is in his blood. This was strikingly 


2 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


shown by the young fellows from interior States who 
flocked into our ships during the World War, and who 
so quickly showed aptitude and skill in the sailor’s trade, 
even though many of them had never seen the ocean 
before. 

The War and its demand for shipping have left us 
with a great fleet of merchant vessels of all kinds. 
Everywhere people have been thinking of ships and of 
the ocean, to a degree that has not been so apparent 
since the great days of our flying clippers, sixty-five 
years ago, when Yankee vessels, for a time, had no 
worthy rivals on the seven seas. 

A ship is a very complex and interesting affair. It 
has taken hundreds, yes, thousands of years to develop 
as we know it today, and I propose to tell my readers 
how it has grown, step by step, from the earliest ships 
of which we have knowledge into the mighty steamship 
of today. 

The first floating contrivances, we may be sure, the 
skin canoes, the rafts, and dugouts of primitive men 
could not have differed much from the crude boats made 
by savages of low development in various parts of the 
world today. What fears and doubts, what superstitious 
dread of the unknown must have filled the minds of 
aboriginal men before they dared to venture out on the 
face of the waters! How slow and halting was their 
progress, as they learned, little by little, to direct their 
craft, to make the wind work for them by stretching a 
skin on a bough and steering with a branch or a rude 
paddle! 

But the sea is at once a highway and a hunting ground, 
and the value of floating transportation, as well as the 


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 3 


resource of fish to serve as food, could not fail to appeal 
to the most primitive minds. So that boats of various 
kinds must have appeared very early indeed in the his- 
tory of the human race, and as civilization slowly de- 
veloped, the arts of shipbuilding and navigation came 
into being and grew along with it. None of the fabrics 
contrived by man have shown a more careful instinct, or 
more unwillingness to abandon the tried for the untried, 
than the ships he has built. So we have a very gradual, 
continuous chain of improvement, one century follow- 
ing in the steps of the previous ones, in a way hardly 
shown so clearly in any other man-made object, as is 
the case with the ship. Even today there are vessels 
in active service which show, in the construction of their 
bows, vestiges of the influence of the beaks, or rostra, 
that appear on the triremes of the Greeks and Romans, 
and there is a decided likeness between the hull-form of 
a modern racing yacht like the Resolute and the ships 
of ancient Egypt, which are the first of which we have 
accurate records. 

What were they like, the merchantmen of Ancient 
Egypt? Well, the drawing I have made of one of them 
sailing up the Nile has been taken from a wall painting 
believed to date back to about 1600 B.c. We have an 
excellent idea, from the models and frescoes found in 
the temples, and from old Egyptian accounts which the 
scholars have deciphered, how they looked, where they 
voyaged, and how they were handled by their crews. 
Most amusing little reproductions of them have been 
taken from the tombs, and can be seen in our musetums. 

The resemblance they bear to certain aquatic birds, 
such as the duck or swan, is so striking that there can 


4 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


be no doubt that the first hull-forms were adapted from 
these creatures. As long ago as five thousand years 
before the Christian era the Egyptians had reached a 
high degree of civilization and carried on an active float- 
ing commerce. Much of it was up and down the Nile. 
They also navigated the Red Sea, and fleets were sent 
south and east to the “Land of Punt,” whence they 
brought incense for their religious ceremonies. In cer- 
tain boats in use at the present time on the Nile a sail- 
form quite similar to that of the ancient ships is still 
employed and it may be regarded as the forerunner of 
the “lateen” sail used everywhere in the Mediterranean. 
When the great trading community of Carthage, 
which was founded by the Pheenicians, came into being, 
its sailors took their ideas of shipbuilding from the 
Egyptian craft. They became a famous race of seamen, 
explorers, and fishermen, and their mercantile marine 
dominated the Mediterranean commerce for a long 
period. These daring navigators are said to have pushed 
entirely around Africa past the Cape of Good Hope, to 
have crossed the rough Bay of Biscay to Britain in 
search of tin, the North Sea to Norway, and some have 
even credited them with having reached the coast of 
South America more than two thousand years before 
the time of Columbus! Their ships reached a length of 
more than three hundred feet, being propelled, like all 
the early vessels, by both sails and oars, and were often 
richly decorated. They were provided with a beak or 
ram for fighting, a feature that was later employed by 
the Greeks and Romans. The Greeks adopted the ideas 
and vessel-types of the Phcenicians, with little change, 
when they became in their turn a seafaring people. 


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WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG ” 


As far back as 1300 B.c. they were engaged in naviga- 
tion, and in their age of glory they built interesting and 
picturesque forms of sailing and rowing craft. One of 
the early types was the “‘penteconter” which had twenty- 
five oars to each side, as shown in the picture. Later 
on they constructed “biremes” and “triremes”’ from the 
models of the Phcenicians, with two or three rows or 
banks (benches) of oarsmen, one above the other. The 


A GREEK ‘ PENTECONTER.’’ 


merchant vessels depended more on their sails, and less 
on their oars, than those used for war. The tendency 
to build large craft propelled by oars has lasted in the 
Mediterranean all through history right down to our 
own times. For that matter the use of “sweeps” or long 
Oars, was general in fairly large seagoing vessels in 
Northern Europe and in America till well into the nine- 
teenth century. 

The Greeks also built “quadriremes,” “quinquiremes,” 
and so on. The manner of arranging the oarsmen in 
such craft has been much discussed by scholars, and the 
question is hard to settle. I incline to the opinion that 


39 66 


8 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS, 


several rowers were placed at each oar in the larger 
craft, so that they might not be too high and unwieldly, 
and that we are not to accept the terms applied to these 
ships as meaning that six, or eight, or even more tiers 
of oars could have been placed one above the other. 
The Greek practice was to haul their ships up on the 
shore when not in use, and they were always provided 
with ladder-like gangways for embarking or landing 
their crews, as is shown in the pictures, a feature which 
had come down to them from the Egyptians. Our mod- 
ern inland river steamboats carry contrivances which are 
used in a similar way. 

All the Greek vessels were provided with heavy oaken 
keels to take the strain of hauling ashore, being sheathed 
with green planking, for they did not understand the art 
of bending hard, seasoned timber in the steam box, as 
was done by shipbuilders of later times. They caulked 
the seams with tar and tow packed into the joints. The 
hulls were painted fancifully, and decorated with figures 
and friezes of mythological or historical subjects. The 
sails were dyed in brilliant tints, such as purple for 
royalty, or they might be black, for mourning. These 
vessels were provided with gear much like that in use 
aboard modern ships, such as lead-lines for soundings, 
flags and lights for signaling; and anchors not unlike 
those employed at the present time. Their navigation 
was, of course, of the nature of coasting, since they 
maneuvered in narrow seas, among many islands, and 
they had no compasses or instruments to determine their 
whereabouts. Amidships they were fitted with screens 
or washboards to keep out the spray. The merchant 
vessels were built much broader in proportion to their 


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WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG II 


length than the warships, a feature that lasted in modern 
vessels till recent times. They carried one or two masts 
with a single sail on each, and they shortened sail by 
“brailing” it up to the yard, which was not lowered or 
hoisted, but always remained aloft. The lines for brail- 
ing passed over the sail and back to blocks on the yard, 
through which they led down to the decks, so that the 
sail could be loosed or furled in the manner of a curtain. 
There might be as many as eighteen of these brailing 
lines. The same method is followed still on the lateen- 
rigged craft of the Mediterranean, and it differs little 
from the clew- and bunt-line system used on modern 
square-rigged vessels. Very often the Greek galleys 
had eyes painted on each side of the bow, just as have 
all Chinese junks at the present time. “No habee eye, 
how can see?” the Chinaman will ask you. A volume 
could be written anent the ways of sailormen, in all 
climes and ages, in the decoration of ships. 

For many centuries the seas were everywhere a chosen 
hunting-field for pirates and corsairs. The Greek and 
later, the Roman ships carried castle-like structures from 
which missiles could be hurled down upon their enemies. 
The building of similar constructions for this purpose 
lasted till quite recent times, from which survives our 
word “forecastle.” 

It is interesting to learn that a reproduction of an 
ancient trireme, about 150 feet long, and carrying 130 
Oarsmen, was built in France in 1861. It was found 
handy of management and quite fast. The ancient ships 
of Greece, we are told, would usually cover about 60 
marine miles a day, being sometimes pushed to 130. 
(A marine mile is 6080 feet.) 


12 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


When Rome began to grow strong and populous, con- 
ditions made it imperative that she should be powerful 
on the seas. Her teeming population required an ever- 
extending carrying-trade to supply its needs, and the 
merchant marine thus created had to be defended. Her 
ships followed the Greek models, and were still largely 
oar-driven, the trireme being a common type, and great 
fleets were employed in trading to and from Egypt and 
the East. There is in the Dialogues of Lucian a graphic 
account of the voyage of one of the corn ships from 
Egypt, about A.D. 120, which, after being driven out of 
her course by heavy gales, was forced to bear up through 
the 7“gean Sea to the Piraeus, the port of Athens. She 
had been no less than seventy days at sea. She was 130 
feet long, with a depth of 29 feet, and was 30 feet wide. 
Her stern bore a gilded goose-neck rising high above 
the water, and her foresail was dyed a brilliant flame- 
color. She had two masts, the forward one slanting 
outward and ahead at a sharp angle—the forefather, so 
to speak, of the modern bowsprit. 

It is evident that the ancient sailors had léarned the 
principle of the “center of effort’—that the sails must 
be so placed that the leverage of the mast is exerted 
under the pressure of the wind at a point not far from 
the center of the hull, so that the vessel can be easily 
steered. Those who go a-sailing in small boats which 
have a tendency to gripe, or to carry a lee helm, will 
recognize the application of this principle, and its im- 
portance. The Roman ship which I have chosen for 
representation, adapted from a relief found near the 
mouth of the Tiber, will commend itself to those having 
any practical experience, as being a well-balanced and 


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 13 


seaworthy vessel. She shows a striking resemblance to 
the ships of the Middle Ages, and the details of her rig- 
ging shown in the ancient relief are very similar to those 
found many generations later, in sailing ships. The lines 
for brailing up the sails pass through rings instead of 


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A RoMAN MERCHANT SHIP. (ABOUT A.D. 200) 


pulley-blocks, working as curtains are sometimes op- 
erated. Some of these ancient vessels must have been 
quite sizeable craft, for we are told in the Acts of the 
Apostles that there were 276 souls with St. Paul in 
the vessel in which he was wrecked. 

It was centuries before men learned the art of “beat- 
ing” or working a vessel under sail toward the wind. 


14 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


Thus we are told in the Acts XXVII: 15, “when the ship 
was caught, and could not bear up into the wind, we let 
her drive.’ This is borne out by the rig of our Romar 
ship in the drawing, for it readily appears that she could 
be sailed only with the wind aft or abeam. I shall re- 
turn to this subject further on, in dealing with the han- 
dling of sail ships. 

The oarsmen on these ancient craft were not Romans, 
but were recruited or impressed from the subject races 
about the Mediterranean. One is reminded here of the 
Barbary corsairs of the early nineteenth century, whose 
galleys bore a strong resemblance to those of the an- 
cients. ‘These were manned by unfortunate slaves or 
prisoners, among whom were not a few poor fellows 
captured out of American ships. Man-power has always 
been cheap about the Mediterranean, which probably ac- 
counts for the persistence of large oar-driven craft in 
those latitudes long after they had disappeared from 
more northern fleets. 

During the first century we find other types of ves- 
sels, adapted to different purposes, developing among 
the Romans. A common one was the Liburnian galley, 
which was a lightly built form of bireme or trireme. 
These vessels are described as being aphract—that is, 
with the upper deck open at the sides. They were later 
superseded by larger war vessels. Recent discoveries in 
Tunis have given us something like a complete catalogue 
of the types of Roman trading vessels of about A.D. 200 
varying from rafts and rowing boats to horse-barges, or 
Iippagi, and larger cargo boats (actuarii). Among 
these was the corbita, from which was derived the word 
“corvette,” applied in later times to a sloop of war. It 


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 15 


is interesting to note, in these ancient craft, the begin- 
nings of methods which developed, step by step through 
the ages, into the complicated gear of the nineteenth cen- 
tury sailing ship. 

When Cesar prepared to invade Britain, in 55 B.c., 
he established a shipyard at Boulogne, on the north coast 
of France. His first attempt was a failure, his fleet being 
badly shattered by a storm. He must have had an abun- 


HALYARD 
ANCIEN? BL OCh 


ROMAN 
ANCHOR 


TREENA/L 
FASTENING 
OF ANCIENT SHIP 


SOME DETAILS OF ANCIENT SHIPS, RESEMBLING SOME MODERN 
FEATURES, 


dant supply of skilled labor to depend on, for his invad- 
ing force, in the following year, required 600 ships. 
That the Romans were competent in naval construction 
is borne out by the fragments of a Roman ship now in 
the London Museum. These relics, dug up near West- 
minster, are believed to date from the third century. 
The vessel was about go feet long, and was remarkably 
well constructed, quite up to modern standards in many 
respects. 


16 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


Virgil tells us, in stately stanzas, of the race of the 
ships of Sicily: 


Four galleys first, which equal rowers bear, 
Advancing, in the watery lists appear, 
The speedy Dolphin, that outstrips the wind, 
Bore Mnestheus, author of the Memmian kind: 
Gyas the vast Chimzra’s bulk commands, 
Which rising, like a tow’ring city stands; 
Three Trojans tug at every lab’ring oar 
Three banks in three degrees the sailors bore 
Beneath their sturdy strokes the billows roar. 
Sergesthus, who began the Sergian race, 
In the great Centaur took the leading place; 
Cloanthus on the sea-green Scylla stood, 
From whom Cluentius draws his Trojan blood. 
—ineid, V. (Dryden’s Translation) 


He continues with a stirring account of the race, and 
the victory of the “sea-green Scylla” over her rivals. 

During the greatest period of the Roman power they 
built immense water-basins, in which actual naval battles 
were fought by quite large fleets. These pools were 
surrounded by seats for spectators very much like 
a modern football stadium. 

In the late years of the Empire, vessels were built 
which rivaled in magnificence, and even in size, the great 
passenger liners of today. It is hard to realize that we 
may be able to judge, at the present day, and by actual 
witness, of the splendor of these vessels. Yet there are 
now lying at the bottom of Lake Nemi, near the Cam- 
panian coast, two Roman galleys of the period of Cali- 
gula (A.D. 37-41) built by that emperor for his pleasure 
cruises, one of which is about 450 feet long, and the 


~ 


WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG 17 


other about 90. These vessels were first located in the 
fifteenth century, and since then divers have brought up 
many objects from them at various times. They have 
been thoroughly examined and measured by the divers 
under the direction of antiquarians, to study the details 
of their construction. Aboard of them were found decks 
paved with beautiful mosaics, statues of bronze, and 
various ornaments and utensils of ancient fabrication. 
Such wonderful feats of salvage are nowadays being 
performed in the raising of sunken vessels that it seems 
within the range of possibility that these antique galleys 
may yet be exposed to view. 

We are well informed, through old sculptures and 
models, as to many details of the later Roman ships. 
How they were rigged and handled is clear to anyone 
having some little nautical knowledge. Thus, in the 
Roman merchantman I have drawn, the “deadeyes” for 
setting up the shrouds, and the purchases for getting 
the mainstay down taut are almost identical with the 
devices for the same purposes in quite modern vessels. 
The larger merchant ships of this period are thought to 
have measured about 150 tons, the registry of a good- 
sized Bank fishing schooner of the present time. 

And so we have seen the Egyptians, starting with the 
suggestions given them by the aquatic birds, building 
their combined rowing and sailing vessels. These were 
employed on the Nile or in short trading voyages, for 
the Egyptians were not naturally a maritime people, and 
were much less warlike than the other races that fol- 
lowed them around the Mediterranean. Then the Phe- 
nicians improved greatly on their methods and showed 
a real nautical genius, venturing far out to sea, rounding 


18 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


Africa, trading to Britain, and dominating for a long 
time the sea-borne traffic of the Mediterranean. From 
the types of vessels they constructed were developed 
those of Greece, and they played an important part in 
the picturesque history of that wonderful people. The 
Romans, following in their wake, became the masters of 
the ancient world, and employed their shipping as one 
of the great agencies of their mastery, building vessels 
of many types, for many purposes, and thus laying the 
foundation for the shipwrights of later ages by the skill 
they acquired in this difficult and interesting art. 

No details have come down to us of ships from the 
Roman times till the end of the ninth century. A little 
glimmer of light is thrown on the subject by the Tactica 
of the emperor Leo, which tells us of Byzantine galleys, 
double-banked and having 25 rowers on a side. It is 
evident, however, that the Romans left a foundation for 
the methods of build and rig, which reappear in the ships 
of the Middle Ages, methods with details of gear and 
equipment surprisingly similar in many respects to those 
of quite recent times. 


CHAPTER II 
HARDY SAILORS OF THE NORTH 


Ny LE mighty empires were growing and dying 
about the sunlit shores of the Mediterranean, the 
forefathers of the dominant sailor-races of today were 
roving around the Baltic and North Sea coasts, spending 
their time in tribal wars and endless struggles with fog 
and wintry seas. Through the mist and drifting rack 
of northern sea history have come down to us stirring 
tales of valor and hardihood on the gray and bitter 
waters, where our ancestors learned to sail the restless 
ocean, and to wring from Father Neptune his reluctant 
consent to their undertakings afloat. 

Epics and sagas seasoned with the salt spray, lore of 
warriors and maidens, Vikings and Valkyries, fill the 
Norse legends, and through them sounds the hoarse 
refrain of the northern sea, chanting the praise of our 
rough heritage, the pasture and highway of the mariner. 
Here was born the sea tradition, common to the Norse- 
man, the Briton, and the American, which has played so 
large a part in the growth of the British Empire and the 
American Republic. Certain it is that love of the sea 
and of ships, in the British race, is due to the Norse 
blood brought into Britain during the constant raids and 
forays, the accounts of which fill the Anglo-Saxon 


19 


20 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


Chronicle. There is no evidence of its existence among 
the ancient Britons, and they had no ships to oppose the 
Romans when the latter invaded the island. 

A number of vessels of the “dugout” type have been 
unearthed in different parts of England, notably one at 
Brigg, in Lincolnshire, which is 48 feet 6 inches long. 
This boat was found in 1886, and shows traces of 
benches for oarsmen. All these dugouts belong, prob- 
ably, to the Stone Age, as they contain no metal, and 
from their general resemblance to others brought to light 
in Denmark and about Bremen they are regarded as 
being of Viking origin. Crude as were these early 
craft, the Vikings came at length to develop ships and 
methods that show a striking aptitude for the art of sea- 
faring. The theory has been advanced, and it seems 
a reasonable one, though we have no actual record, that 
the Phoenicians may have penetrated into Scandinavian 
waters, and thus influenced the Norsemen in their ship- 
building. However this may be, our Viking ancestors 
built ships of striking beauty of model, with plenty of 
sheer to make them “‘sea-kindly,” sharp at bow and stern 
and bearing high carved emblems curving up from stern 
and after end, vessels which are so cleverly designed 
that shipwrights of modern times have been glad to fol- 
low their lines in fast-sailing craft even of very recent 
construction. 

_ Perhaps the most striking example among the many 
Viking vessels unearthed is the one known as the “‘Gog- 
stad ship.” It was an ancient custom of the Norsemen 
to bury their deceased chiefs or heroes in their ships, a 
high mound being raised over them. The exploration 
of these mounds has led to the discovery of a number 


ai}: 


Sa 
SSS 
= SSS 
— ~<S 


i 


THE “GoGsTAD SHIP’? RESTORED—A TYPICAL VIKING VESSEL. 


SAILORS OF THE NORTH 23 


of the old vessels. At Gogstad, near Sandefjord in 
Norway, a ship of this kind was found in 1880, which 
is now in the Royal Frederiks University, in Christiana. 
She is of beautiful model and splendid construction, 
about 80 feet long. Several of the wooden shields which 
were hung along the gunwales for the protection of the 
crew are still in place. The rudder, which was placed 
at the right or starboard side of the stern, is almost in- 
tact. There is a step or socket for the mast and places 
for thirty-two oars, sixteen on a side. Thus the com- 
bination of oar- and sail-power, with the steering gear 
at one side instead of on the stern post as in modern 
craft, reappears in this interesting vessel, as was the sys- 
tem in the row-galleys of the Mediterranean. 

At the time of the World’s Fair in Chicago an exact 
replica of the Gogstad ship was built in Norway, and 
navigated across the Atlantic by a crew of hardy Nor- 
wegians. She was pronounced an able sea boat in all 
respects. This was a striking demonstration of the pos- 
sibility of Leif Ericson’s famous voyage to New Eng- 
land in the year 1000. 

These Viking ships, whether used for war or for com- 
merce, were all very similar in construction. They were 
clinker-built, or “lap-streaked,”’ carrying a square sail 
much wider at the foot than at the top, which was often 
decorated in brilliant colors, striped, or embroidered in 
gold. The Norsemen were skilful sailors, and under- 
stood the art of tacking ship, though of course the square 
‘sail was not adapted to “beating” against a head wind. | 
The oarsmen might be sixty or more in number. They 
were protected by the row of shields hung along the 
gunwales outside, between which the oars were fastened, | 


24 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


each to a stout pin by a leather strap. At night they 
spread a “tilt,” or tent over the entire vessel and slept 
in leather bags. The ships were provisioned with salt 
meat and fish for the long voyages, and carried, besides 
the oarsmen, a force of stalwart warriors. Thus 
equipped, they fared far to the north and west and ex- 
tended their mastery over a large part of Northern 
Europe. They conquered Greenland and _ Iceland, 
reached Newfoundland, and overran Normandy, which 
takes its name from the Norsemen. Their constant 
forays led them often into Britain, and even round into 
the Mediterranean, while traces of their rule are found 
all along the Baltic coast. 

So strong was the influence of these daring Norse 
mariners on the art of ship construction that for many 
centuries all the nations of Northern Europe followed 
their models in the vessels they learned to build, and their 
methods in their navigation, and the shipbuilders of our 
own time owe much to the study of the Viking craft. 
It is interesting to observe how closely that marvel of 
seaworthiness, the American whaleboat, follows the lines 
of the ancient Viking vessels, while the Down-East 
“pinkie’ of the old New England fishermen resembled 
them very decidedly. 

The Norse type termed the snekkja, or serpent, was 
the predominant design, and until the twelfth century 
most ships of Northern Europe reflect its influence. 
This vessel had a raised deck fore and aft, the prede- 
cessor of the forecastle and quarter deck in modern 
ships, and amidships was a lower main deck, or waist. 
Here were placed the oarsmen, the mast and the crew 
to trim and handle the sail. As the ship’s maneuvering 


SAILORS OF THE NORTH 2s 


could be best observed and directed from the after deck 
this portion of the vessel came to have a hierarchic char- 
acter, still retained in men-of-war. The Saxon ships of 
Edgar and Harold were of this kind. The cargo vessels 
differed from the warships only in being broader in the 
beam. 

It was after the conquest of England by William of 
Normandy that his consort, Queen Matilda, is believed 
to have fashioned the famous Bayeux tapestry, which 
has been preserved to our time, and which gives us many 
details of the ancient ships of that period. They are of 
the Viking type, as was natural, taking into account 
the Norse origin of the conquering Normans. The 
methods of handling and mooring them, as shown by the 
tapestry, differed little from the ways of modern fish- 
ermen in sail craft. 

Here, then, was a school of seamanship differing from 
that developed about the Mediterranean, adapted to 
northern seas and conditions, and separated by what was 
then a long stretch of sea travel. That the Norsemen 
voyaged to the Mediterranean is certain, and no doubt 
they observed what they saw there and learned from it, 
as sailors of all lands have always done on their cruises, 
but the methods of building and navigation were native 
to the two respective schools. 

A new phase of maritime history came in with the 
Crusades. When Richard Coeur-de-Lion of England 
fitted out his fleet for the Holy Land, he commenced the 
era of long-voyage navigation that has exerted such a 
tremendous influence on the progress of the Anglo- 
Saxon race. 

Let us see, then, if we can picture a typical ship of 


26 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


Lion-hearted Richard’s expedition. She must be a size- 
able craft, for on board have to be stowed knights and 
their horses, crews of from forty to seventy seamen and 
all the stores and equipment required for a long voyage. 
The ship is constructed much on Viking lines, with a 
high structure, castle-like in form, at the bow and stern. 
She has a single mast and sail with a “standing” yard 


AN ENGLISH SHIP OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 
(OARS WERE USED, Except IN Farr WINDS.) 


which remains aloft when the sail is furled, is provided 
with long oars and a row of shields along the gunwale 
gaily painted with the heraldic devices of her comple- 
ment of knights. That she is stout and seaworthy we 
may be sure, for many gales have to be weathered on 
the long cruise. 

She is built with overlapping streaks, with cross- 


SAILORS OF THE NORTH 27 


timbered reinforcements, and is of broader and deeper 
hull than the old Viking ships, for she must carry fore 
and stern castles, fighting tops, and other heavy weights 
high above the water. 

At Marseilles, Richard chartered additional vessels 
and joined his main squadron at Messina. Here we find 


a CEU 


A THIRTEENTH CENTURY VENETIAN SHIP. (THE EARLIEST KNOWN 
COMBINATION OF SQUARE WITH FORE-AND-AFT SAILS.) 


the ships of the north assembled with those of the Med- 
iterranean, successors of the Greek and Roman craft 
that we have seen in the preceding chapter. These ves- 
sels are mainly of two types—the galley class, very 
similar to the Greek and Roman ships, depending largely 
on their oars, and the heavier ships of war or burthen, 


28 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


for sailing under canvas. From the term “galley” came 
later on the names “galiot,” “galleass,’ and ‘‘galleon.” 
A “galley,” however, has always been a light, swift 
craft depending mainly on her oars. 

Here, at this period, appear vessels with two and 
three masts, unknown previously to the seamen of the 
north. We find ships with a large squaresail forward, 
and a triangular lateen on the after mast, precursors of 
the “great-ships,” caravels, and so on of later times, 
direct forefathers of the ships of Columbus and Drake, 
and of the modern sailing ship. 

In the Crusading period we also find “busses,” or 
“buccas” of Venetian origin, “carracks,’’ ‘“dromons,” 
“cogs,” and other types not always easy to differentiate. 
To the larger ships of Richard’s fleet is applied the term 
“esnecca,”’ directly derived from the Viking “snekkja” 
or serpent. 

The Crusades and the resultant intermingling of the 
nations laid the foundations of international trade, and 
seamen thus came to learn and to borrow improvements 
from countries other than their own, so that the ships 
of all the peoples began to have a family resemblance. 
Pilotage and the beginnings of maritime law came into 
being. At a few points where there were monasteries 
on the coast the monks erected beacons—iron cages in 
which fires were kept burning for the guidance of ves- 
sels at night. These were the first lighthouses. When 
the rough sailors and fishermen of those days passed a 
monastery on the shore they dipped their sails and 
crossed themselves in reverence. Hazardous, indeed, 
must have been their navigation, without buoys, or com- 
passes, or charts worthy of the name, through seas in- 


“THESE WERE THE First LIGHTHOUSES,” 


SAILORS OF THE NORTH 31 


fested with pirates and other dangers. We find now the 
beginnings of many details of sails and rigging which 
have lasted down to our day. “Bolt-ropes,” bound 
around the edges of the sails to strengthen them, “rif- 
(reef) ropes,” “seilyerdes” (sail-yards), “bak-steyes” 
(backstays), “haucers” (hawsers), “polives” (pulleys) 
—all these terms date from medieval times. We have 
manuscripts from as far back as the time of Edward III 
in which we can read the peculiar dialect of the sea— 
“hale the bowelyne” (haul the bowline), “vere the shete”’ 
(veer the sheet )—these and many another salty expres- 
sion of five hundred years ago would be readily under- 
stood by the sailormen of today. 

These old ships were put together with wooden pegs 
or “tree-nails’” a method that lasted well into the nine- 
teenth century with our American shipwrights. Although 
they built by rule of thumb, the oldtime builders con- 
structed stout and seaworthy hulls, able to meet all 
weathers. In the fourteenth century, they learned to 
hang the rudder on the stern-post, instead of at one side, 
as had been the practice of the Mediterranean and Vi- 
king mariners. The hull-form became crescent-shaped 
to an exaggerated degree, the bow and stern curving 
sharply upward, arid they had learned to build their ves- 
sels “carvel-fashioned—that is, with the planking smooth 
outside instead of lap-streaked. They carried many 
waving flags, pennants, and “ancients,”’ or ensigns, some 
of the latter nearly as large as the main topsail, using 
lanterns on the stern for signals at night, a practice that 
dates back to the Romans. The custom of shortening 
sail by reefing, or partially furling it to the yard by 
means of “reef-points’—rows of short ropes fastened 


32 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


across the breadth of the sail—is as old, probably, as the 
Viking period, and they also carried “bonnets” or 
breadths laced to the lower edges of the sails, which 
could be detached to reduce the spread of canvas, a 
device that is still used on some European fishing vessels. 
The sharp and slender Viking models had now become 
broader and clumsier, and they were of much heavier 
tonnage. The high structures at the bow and stern were 
built into the hull itself, projecting well outside, and 
forming a part of the ship instead of being merely 
erected on the deck. A platform sheathed about with 
timber was carried at the mast-head for lookouts or 
fighting men, precursor of the “tops” of later days. The 
occupations connected with shipfitting, such as ropemak- 
ing, rigging, ship chandlery, and the fashioning of ma- 
rine ironwork passed into the hands of specialists, dif- 
fering from the classes engaged in other mechanical 
pursuits. At the same time shipping merchants, as dis- 
tinguished from traders and speculators not specially 
devoted to maritime ventures, began to appear in the 
seaports. 

The “carrack” or “great-ship” of the Middle Ages 
presents to the modern eye such a fantastic appearance 
that it is hard for us to realize that men actually voyaged 
and dared the wrath of the mighty ocean in such gro- 
tesque contrivances. Yet the models and pictures that 
have come down to us, and the plans and descriptions 
still extant in so many countries make it possible to re- 
constitute these quaint old vessels in every detail. We 
shall find the masts supported by “shrouds” and “swift- — 
ers’—stout hemp ropes on each side leading downward 
and somewhat backward to allow swing to the yards, 


SAILORS OF THE NORTH 33 


fastened to “deadeyes’” or blocks pierced with holes, 
through which ropes might be laced which could be 
slacked or tightened to ease or take up the strain. The 
deadeyes are hooked to “channels”—timbers bolted like 
shelves to the outside of the hull. Pieces of tarred “‘rat- 
line” stretched across between the shrouds form a rope- 
ladder for going aloft. As topmasts are added to ships 
the ropes to support them, leading down to deadeyes, are 
called backstays. These are fastened abaft the shrouds 
to the channels, and the masts are further sustained by 
stays which lead down forward to the deck, and are called 
by the names of the spars to which they are attached, as 
“mainstay,” “foretopmast stay,” and so on. This part 
of the tophamper is called the “standing rigging,’ to 
distinguish it from the “running rigging’’-—the ropes, 
pulleys, and so forth used in hoisting or lowering the 
sails and gear aloft. Wooden drums turned by hand- 
spikes thrust into sockets served at this time to hoist 
the anchor, similar to the iron capstans still in use. 
Ships were built in the Middle Ages as large as 1000 
_ tons, and there were vessels of respectable size and carry- 
ing-capacity with two or more masts. The Continental 
countries of Europe were much ahead of England in 
ship-construction, for the Wars of the Roses delayed 
the development of the art in Great Britain. During 
this period of civil strife, the ports of north Germany 
and the Netherlands formed a union known as the Han- 
seatic League, which had a powerful influence on the 
extension of trade and the improvement of ships. Ham- 
burg, Amsterdam, Lubeck, and many smaller ports, 
which are still sometimes called the Hanse towns, were 
included in the organization, and the sea tradition of 


34 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


Holland, which later, for a time, led the northern coun- 
tries in shipbuilding, owes much to it. The League 
made great efforts in the restraint of piracy, then rife 
on every sea. When England began, in the Tudor 
times, to extend her overseas influence, the League fur- 
nished her merchants with ships of better design and 
construction than she was then able to build. 

Edward I’s charter, which ordained the regulation of 
the “Cinque Ports” (the five ports, Romney, Dover, 
Sandwich, Hythe, and Hastings, to which others were 
afterwards added), was the beginning of formal mari- 
time law in England. Certain privileges were granted 
to the shipping population of these seaport towns, in 
return for which they were bound to participate in the 
defense of the kingdom. Here were founded the inti- 
mate relations between the navy and the commercial 
marine which have lasted down to our day. 

As ships came to have several masts the arts of rig- 
ging and handling them encountered new problems. The 
lateen sail at the stern was universal, forerunner of the 
“spanker” in modern vessels. Its value in holding the 
ship up to the wind was evident. Topsails appeared 
above the still all-important lower sails. The old ships 
could not, however, be worked to windward like modern 
square-rigged craft. It took hundreds of years to evolve 
the triangular headsails, or jibs, of modern times, as 
well as the staysails, the spencers, trysails, and other 
fore-and-aft sails, so useful when the ship is close- 
hauled, with the wind coming from an angle forward 
of the beam. In the old days, and indeed, clear up to 
the nineteenth century, square sails were cut loose and 
baggy, with the absurd notion that they thus “held the 


SAILORS OF THE NORTH 35 


wind” better. It was the American sailors who learned 
to trim their sails as flat as possible, and who taught 
the world the superior efficiency of sails thus rigged. 
Yet we must credit the pre-Columbian navigators with 
skill and courage, for they managed to build up a great 
international traffic in their clumsy vessels. 

But even though the shipmen of the Middle Ages had 
attained a remarkable degree of progress in the building 
and handling of seaworthy vessels, it would have served 
them little to possess these vessels unless they could 
manage to keep track of their whereabouts when out of 
sight of land on the “lineless, level floor’’ of the trackless 
ocean. It is true that coasters and fishermen, even in 
our own time, will often show an uncanny skill in judg- 
ing their position in thick or stormy weather, but to 
make a landfall after many days at sea, during which 
the run of the ship must be constantly watched and re- 
corded, calls for a knowledge of latitude and longitude, 
of charts and compasses, and a certain equipment of 
scientific instruments to verify the observations or con- 
jectures of the navigator. I do not propose to inflict 
on my readers a treatise on mathematics or astronomy, 
but we will do well to glance at the early beginnings of 
the art of navigation, without which all the fleets of 
the world would be helpless. 

The ancient Mediterranean navigators, making short 
voyages, rarely out of sight of land, had little need of 
such knowledge. Some acquaintance with astronomy 
and map-making they had, but their notions were far 
from accurate, and they did not know the compass. 
From very early times it was believed that in the East 
lay a realm of fabulous treasure, “the Indies,” beyond 


36 THE TALE OE OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


which was the mysterious and alluring land of Cathay. 
In the many attempts to reach these countries by sea, 
extending over several centuries, were laid the founda- 
tions of our modern world-knowledge, and from China, 
or “Cathay,” came that indispensable instrument, the 
compass. It is not till 1190 that we find it first men- 
tioned by Europeans, though possibly the Crusaders may 
have heard of it from the Arabians. The Chinamen of 
very eatly times set up a little image of a man in the 
bows of their ships, holding in his hand, like a spear, 
a bar of magnetized iron, the figure being balanced on 
a pivot. From the end of the bar which pointed south 
they took their direction, with that amusing tendency 
of the Chinaman to do things in ways directly opposite 
to the peoples of the West. They cruised as far as the 
Red Sea with its aid, and thus the Arabians became 
familiar.with its use. But it was not till the fourteenth 
century that the compass, floating in a box to neutralize 
the rolling of the ship in somewhat the form now in use, 
made its appearance in Europe. 

The Arabians, to whom we owe much in the way of 
early mathematical discovery, had learned to make 
charts, to work out primitive tables of latitude and 
longitude, and to construct the first nautical instruments. 
Next to the compass, the most important was the as- 
trolabe, a contrivance for measuring the angle of the 
sun or the stars with the horizon, as is necessary for the 
navigator that he may estimate his position. This con- 
sisted of a bronze ring at the center of which a rotating 
arm was fixed. On this arm were two sights, which 
were brought into line with the sun when at the meri- 
dian. On the end of the rotating member were pointers, — 


SAILORS OF THE NORTH 37 


which marked the angle on the ring, its circumference 
being graduated in degrees and minutes. 

Should you sail around the sharply projecting head- 
land of Cape St. Vincent, the southwest corner of Por- 
tugal, and continue a little to the southeast, you would 
come to a bleak point on which once stood the famous 
observatory of Sagres. Here was born in 1415 the first 
naval college in history, an institution whose influence 
has been incalculable, for here were first studied and as- 
sembled the principles whose application made possible 
the discovery of America and the mighty growth of 
maritime commerce, consequent upon the opening of the 
sea routes of the world. The founding of this institution 
was the work of Prince Henry the Navigator of Por- 
tugal. This nobleman, whose efforts rank him as one 
of the world’s great benefactors, undertook to bring 
together and compare all the men, the science, and the 
experience that might be utilized for the enlightenment 
of the mariner and the explorer. For forty-five years 
he labored at this task, and it was due to his activities 
that the voyages of Columbus, Da Gama, Magellan, and 
all the long list of immortal seamen who made known 
the remote places of the world were possible. The use 
of charts, instruments, the arts of pilotage, seamanship 
in all its branches, geography, astronomy—whatever of 
human knowledge might throw light on the problems of 
the mariner, were taught systematically, under the di- 
rection of Prince Henry the Navigator, by the best- 
informed scholars of his period, brought together from 
all the countries where such men might be found. 
Methods could now be compared and _ standardized, 
treatises and handbooks could be published and made 


38 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


available to spread the knowledge to all countries, and 
men like Columbus and Sebastian Cabot knew where 
to look for the most complete and recent information, 
which they could utilize in practical experience. The 
example of Prince Henry’s school led to the foundation 
of similar institutions, notably in Spain and England. 

The period starting from the Crusades, during which 
sea-borne traffic between the nations became general, 
witnessed the founding of the modern commercial world. 
The principal instrument in the building of this prodig- 
ious edifice, the sea-going ship, is essentially a floating 
box or case, in form the result of generations of experi- 
ment, provided with motive power—oars, sails, engines 
later on—containing quarters for the crew and room for 
stores and cargo. Of all the fabrics contrived by man 
no other has had an equal influence on the spread of 
civilization and the increase of wealth. The garments 
we wear, the food we eat, the countless articles that con- 
tribute to our vast and complicated twentieth-century 
civilization, are all due in greater or less degree to sea 
transportation. 

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the sea- 
going ship took on a form which in its essential elements 
continued as long as wind and sails were the motive 
power, culminating in the ever-glorious clipper of the 
nineteenth century. 

To Prince Henry the Navigator we should attribute 
due credit for founding the studies that have provided 
the world-mariner with so many tools essential in his 
voyages. 

Throughout the Western World at this period was 
felt the stimulus of the Renaissance, the great awaken- 


SAILORS OF THE NORTH 39 


ing from the slumber of the Dark Ages. The ripening 
energy of the time was ready to burst forth into the full 
fruition of the sixteenth century, and the mysteries that 
had lain shrouded since the dawn of time in the far places 
beyond the sea-horizon were at length to be revealed. 


CHAPTER III 
THE ARGOSIES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 


Aue this background stands the mighty figure 
of that consummate seaman, Christopher Colum- 
bus. When he had led the way out into the path of the 
setting sun to the unknown lands beyond the sea rim, he 
was soon followed by a fast-growing company of daunt- 
less men, whose deeds will be immortal in the annals 
of the sea. 

For a long time the maritime capital of the Mediter- 
ranean was the Republic of Venice. Here especially the 
system and organization of the shore services connected 
with the administration of merchant fleets were brought 
to a high degree of development. Dockyards and ar- 
senals teeming with activity and richly provided with all 
sorts of marine equipment were the bases for a wide- 
spreading trade with the Levant and the ports of the 
western Mediterranean. It was here that the fleets of 
the Crusaders were outfitted. Wéith the intensive study 
of maritime science by Prince Henry of Portugal and 
his followers the centers of sea power began to shift 
toward the lands which looked out on the Atlantic. 
Genoa and then Lisbon became great seaports, and Bar- 
celona and Cadiz soon took rank with them. 

Columbus had thoroughly acquainted himself with all 


40 


THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY _ 4I 


the teachings of the maritime scientists of his time. His 
three ships may be accepted as typical examples of the 
merchant vessels of his period, not to be classed with 
the exceptionally fine vessels, but representative of the 
tun of trading ships. The Santa Maria, his flag-ship, 
had been built for the trade around the coast of Europe 
to Flanders, while the two smaller, the Nina and Pinta, 
did not differ in type from many other Mediterranean 
craft. None of the three had been constructed especially 
for the voyage planned by Columbus. In the search for 
exact information regarding these vessels every possible 
source has been investigated, and we may reasonably 
conclude that our present ideas of them are correct. 
We may form an excellent impression of their behavior 
at sea, as reproductions of them were built in 1893 for 
the Columbian Exposition. The three replicas were con- 
structed at Carraca in Spain from the best information 
available and were brought across the Atlantic on their 
own bottoms, being well tested under sail. Of these 
caravels the Santa Maria is described as having been a 
fairly handy ship in good weather, though hardly ca- 
pable of “making a passage,’ as modern sailors say, 
being very wet, as well as slow and difficult to manage 
in head winds. Columbus himself makes in his log many 
complaints of the behavior of his ships, especially the 
Nina and Pinta, which he says, would not sail “with the 
bowline.” He means that they would not work close- 
hauled on the wind. In this trim the sails are braced 
as nearly fore and aft as possible, the forward edges of 
the square sails being stretched tightly up to windward 
by ropes called bowlines. Hence the expression “on a 
taut bowline” common in the old sea tales, 


42 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


Columbus was provided with an astrolabe, and also 
a “cross-staff,” a device which was used for the same 
purpose, and which was more convenient for observa- 
tions when the ship was pitching in a heavy sea. If 
you will examine the drawing, you may form a good 
idea of its use. As the methods of Columbus were 
typical of his times, we may assume that they were those 
employed by all the great discoverers of the epoch, which 


AN ASTROLABE OF THE TyPE USED By COLUMBUS AND THE EARLY 
NAVIGATORS. 


gives them a special interest. He had a compass of 
thirty-two points, and he used an hour-glass to mark 
the time. There is mention of a quadrant, but its form 
can only be conjectured. It may have resembled the 
Davis quadrant depicted. That he was an accomplished 
seaman, for his period, is amply shown, for his log, 
which is still preserved, is largely in his own handwrit- 
ing. 


THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 43 


The vessels of Columbus are termed caravels, from 
the Spanish word carabela, an expression somewhat 
loosely applied to vessels engaged in fishing and the 
coasting trade, rather than for long voyages. The cara- 
vel was a smaller edition of the “carrack’’ employed in 


TAE CROSS - STAFF yl” 


SLIDING 
CROSS -PIECE 


“SIGHT-VANE” 


Spal gp Ri 


WORTZON 


TAE BACKSTAFF, OR 
DAVIS’ QUADRANT, 1586 


INSTRUMENTS USED BY THE EARLY DEEP-sEA NAVIGATORS. (THE 
Cross-STAFF HAD THREE OR FOUR CROSS-PIECES OF DIFFERING 
LENGTHS, USED ACCORDING TO THE ALTITUDE OF THE SUN. THE 
SUM OF THE GRADUATIONS ON THE LARGE AND SMALL ARCS, IN THE 
BAcK-sTAFF, GAVE THE ALTITUDE OF THE SUN.) 


the merchant service, and the term was used only in 
Southern Europe. The Portuguese built at the period 
carracks as large as two thousand tons in the measure- 
ment of the times, based on capacity reckoned in casks, 
or “tuns,’ of wine. There were also galleys and row- 
barges, showing the persistence of oar-driven craft. 


44 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


Presently appears the “galleon’’ of romantic interest. 
It should be understood that this term is not of Spanish 
origin, as there were galleons in England and in Italy 
which antedated the “galleons of Spain.” In the experi- 
menting that has always gone on in ship construction, 
this type of vessel was evolved as an improvement on 
the caravel, which was a very beamy craft, often half 
as broad as her length. The galleon, first designed by 
the Italian constructors, was three times as long as her 
width on the keel. At the stern and bow elaborate struc- 
tures, rich with carving and gilding, overhung the water, 
projecting far beyond the hull proper, as shown in the 
illustrations. From the galleon was evolved the “great- 
ship” whose basic features can be traced in all the large 
vessels built up till the nineteenth century. We also find 
the “pinnesse,”’ or pinnace, a term only applied in later 
times to a ship’s boat. This was a small flush-decked 
vessel carrying square sails on the fore- and main-, and 
a triangular lateen on the mizzen-mast. The “‘galleasse” 
was a vessel with auxiliary oar power, differing little 
otherwise from the galleon. 

With the advent of the Tudors in England and the: 
end of civil strife, a period of rapid progress in things 
connected with the sea commenced. The sharp distinc- 
tion between the merchant ship and the man-of-war did 
not develop till generations later, but certain special 
types of warships appear during this period. Of these 
one of the most famous was the Great Harry of Henry 
the Eighth, of 1500 tons, a ship as exceptional as was 
the Dreadnought later on. She had four masts, the 
fore, main, mizzen, and “‘bonaventure.” On three masts 
she carried topsails above the lower sails, and over them 


THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 45 


topgallantsails. On the after mast, or bonaventure, she 
hoisted a lateen sail, with a square topsail above it. 
Picturesque indeed were these old ‘“‘wind-jammers.” 
They were painted green and white, the Tudor colors, 
covered with carving and blazonry. Nettings were 
stretched fore and aft to protect the decks from falling 


IN SHIPS LIKE THESE THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY ELIZABETHANS MADE 
THEIR VOYAGES. 


spars or objects from aloft. Banners and pennants 
galore waved from the masts. Far out at the bow curved 
an enormous beak. All these vessels, like those of Co- 
lumbus, carried a square spritsail forward, but no tri- 
angular head sails, or jibs. This spritsail under the bow- 
sprit lasted as late as 1835, on square-rigged vessels. 


Me 


46 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


High above the stern of the oldtime ships towered the 
lanterns, often large enough to contain several people. 
Along the sides appeared a row of heraldic shields, a 
heritage from Viking days. | 
All the ships of this period were steered with the 
“whip-staff,’ a form of steering gear which lasted until 


iu gt < \ 
oe \ 
mae 5 1 


ou ce 
"a 


STEERING AN ELIZABETHAN SHIP WITH THE WHIP-STAFF. 


well into the eighteenth century. This consisted of a 
tiller which led into the stern below decks through a 
yoke frame. To the end of this tiller was attached an 
upright lever which projected up through the deck to 
the helmsman’s post, as shown in the illustration. 

With the development of artillery, the ship became a 
gun platform as well as a carrying craft for cargo. This 


PHE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 47 


fact had an enormous influence on ship-designing for 
several centuries. It was many a long year before the 
merchant sailor could dispense with training in gunnery, 
for fighting was all in the day’s work on any ship en- 
gaged in deep-sea trading till the close of the Napoleonic 
wars in the early nineteenth century. In the World War 
it again became necessary on our merchant vessels. 
Forecastle Jack has always had a hard time of it, 
whatever the flag he sailed under, and it is not until 
recent years that there has been any serious attempt to 
make things easier for him. In the time of the Tudors 
he led an unenviable life. Discipline was brutal, and a 
man might be flogged, or gagged, or put in irons at 
the will of the master, or even keel-hauled by drag- 
ging him under the ship with ropes fastened to the 
yard-arms, from one side to the other. The ship’s 
boats were known as “the boat,” in charge of the boat- 
swain, “the cocke” or “cockboat” handled by the cox- 
swain (from the French coque, a shell), and “the skiff,” 
under the skiffswain. For the day’s food allowance each 
man had one pound of bread and a gallon of beer, which 
took the place of tea or coffee, unknown in those days. 
Four days in the week one pound of meat was allowed, 
replaced at other times by salt fish. Supplies were often 
insufficient or of bad quality, and there was much 
scurvy and other disease. “A little poore John, or salt 
fish, with oyle and mustard, or bisket, butter, cheese or 
Oatmeale, pottage on fish dayes, salt beef, porke and 
pease . . . is your ordinary ship’s allowance,’ says Cap- 
tain John Smith. On such fare were the mighty deeds 
done that have given undying fame to “the spacious 
days of Great Elizabeth.” The ships were filthy and 


48 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


vermin-ridden, in spite of their gorgeous banners and 
decorations, their trumpeters and blazonry. 

The common globe is now, of course, a familiar object 
in schools and libraries, but in the sixteenth century it 
was a rare novelty, to which attached something occult 
in the eyes of the common people. It was used by the 
early explorers as an instrument of navigation. By this 
time the log-line had been invented, to measure the ship’s 
speed, for it is mentioned by Captain John Smith, though 
it is not certain what form it took, or just how it was 
used. The chronometer was not perfected till 1761, and 
the problem of accurately finding the longitude, by com- 
parison of Greenwich time with ship’s time, long baffled 
the mariner. Indeed, the deep-sea shipmaster was not 
much better off than Columbus, as far as navigating in- 
struments were concerned, for many generatioons. 

The tarry dialect of the sea, so racy in its suggestion 
of surging billows and flying spray, had now taken on 
much of the character that makes it a delight to every 
lover of ocean romance. To “spoune before the wind” 
—to “lay the ships by the Ley (Lee)” are among the 
expressions of Captain John Smith. To “make a waft” 
or “weft”—that is, to signal with a flag, belongs to the 
time of Robinson Crusoe. ‘A Spanish ship . . . being 
wheaved amain by us,’’ says Drake, with the same mean- 
ing. “We brought both our frigates on the careen, and 
new tallowed them,” in the same narrative, refers to the 
practice of heaving ships down—heeling or “careening” 
them by tackle made fast to the masthead, so that the 
bottom might be coated with slush or tallow to improve 
their sailing. 

As the epoch of Elizabeth opens into history a long 


THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, 49 


line of immortal seamen comes sweeping over the 
horizon—Drake, Raleigh, Frobisher, Davis, Greenville, 
Gilbert, and many more. A galaxy of daring mariners 
they were, whose deeds will be related as long as Anglo- 
Saxon men go down to the sea in ships. They were 
warriors rather than traders, but it was due to their 
energy and dauntless courage that the sea routes of the 
world were opened up to the peaceful merchantmen of 
later years, and the British possessions in North America 
made available for colonization. 

As we read of Drake and his achievements our wonder 
grows at the sheer nerve and effrontery with which he 
carried out his expeditions “to singe the Spaniard’s 
beard.” The inherited inspiration of such an example 
has had an incalculable influence in the sea traditions of 
the race. 

It is fascinating to evoke the picture of these historic 
squadrons on the lonely seas, their sails emblazoned with 
emblems, their lofty sterns rich with carving, their trum- 
pets sounding as they heave and pitch on the long gray 
rollers. The sun goes down to a deep manly chorus of 
_ hymns and prayers; through the watches of the night, 
the stern lanterns flame with a smoky glare; the guns of 
the flagship signal intermittently to her consorts till sun- 
rise, when the ships close in, to salute the admiral, and 
to receive their orders for the day. 

At the period when Drake and his colleagues began 

their exploits, Spain held the mastery of the sea, and 
her galleons and plate-ships plied between Cadiz and the 
New World, carrying rich freights to tempt the gentle- 
men-adventurers, till the challenge of the English Eliza- 
bethans and their success in the destruction of the Great 


50 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


Armada settled the question of the domination of the 
sea routes, on which depended the development of the 
British colonies in North America. 

Drake voyaged with Hawkins to the West Indies, and 
later made two voyages alone. He wished, we are told, 
“to gain such intelligences as might further him, to get 
some amends for his loss,” his first visits having proved 
unprofitable. Then he sailed on his famous Third Voy- 
age in the Pascha of Plymouth, 70 tons, and the Swan 
of 25 tons, having “three dainty pinnaces” stowed aboard 
in pieces, to be put together as occasion served. Reach- 
ing the Spanish possessions on the Isthmus he harried 
the coast and the settlements where now the Panama 
Canal has been built by American enterprise, landing 
and crossing to the Pacific side, the first of Englishmen 
to view that ocean. He returned to Plymouth with his 
plunder in the year 1573, and four years after he sailed 
on his famous voyage round the world, in the Pelican, 
later renamed the Golden Hind, of 120 tons, with the 
Elizabeth, 80 tons, and her pinnace, the Benedict, the 
Marigold, of 30 tons, and the Swan of 50 tons. In these 
little vessels he rounded South America, losing all his 
fleet but the Golden Hind, and inflicted a prodigious 
amount of damage on the Spanish ships and settlements. 
He was the first British mariner to sail the Pacific, which 
he crossed, visiting many of the islands, and returned 
home around the Cape of Good Hope. 

In the period between Drake’s return and his next 
adventure, that noble sailor, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, set 
forth on his expedition to found the first British colony 
in North America at St. John’s, Newfoundland. His 
fleet numbered five ships, of which the flagship, of 120 


a 


Mi AoA a WA 
HOS | WEN Oe 


fe. 


\ 


‘ 
eZ. Q YY afl 
i : Waa L/ i 
“ ! = =, iJ 4 | , aK 


A British PINNACE AND GALLEON OF ABOUT 1580. THE PINNACE 
IN THE FOREGROUND HAs NETTINGS SPREAD FORE AND AFT OVER 
HER DECKs, AND CLOTHS STRETCHED ALONG HER BULWARKS, TO 
CONCEAL HER CREW IN ACTION. 


re 1 AY 


a Ag 
aan 
oy 


” 


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b 
" 
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* r, ra 
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Pa , 5 
Pee 
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=. 0 hy 
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iY : 
i wf & : 
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j SVs : 4 


THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, 53 


tons, is styled the “Delight, alias the George’ in the ac- 
count written by Richard Hayes, one of his captains. 
The others ranged from 200 tons down to the little 
Squirrel, of only 10. The Delight was soon forced to 
return by heavy weather, and the others proceeded on 
“this action of planting Christian people and religion in 
those remote and barbarous nations of America,” as 
Hayes puts it. After a rough experience of the utmost 
hardship and peril, they lost their commander in the 
gloom of a terrible September night, as they were striv- 
ing homeward. pee 

In April of 1585 Sir Richard Grenville planted a 
hundred British colonists on Roanoke Island, off the 
North Carolina coast. A few months later Drake, in 
command of the greatest armament that had ever crossed 
the sea, having a fleet of twenty-five vessels, manned 
by 2300 men, again ravaged the Spanish settlements. 
He brought back with him to England the Roanoke 
colonists, who had given up in discouragement. 

The accounts of all these early voyagers bear witness 
to the lack of any knowledge of ship sanitation, and the 
consequent appalling losses by disease, reaching in 
Drake’s fleet between four and five hundred from this 
cause alone. It was not until the time of Captain Cook, 
_ in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, that effect- 
ive measures were adopted for preserving the health of 
men on shipboard. 

What was the nature of the ships employed by the 
Elizabethan adventurers, and what are the meanings of 
the terms that occur so often in the enthralling narra- 
tives they have left us? That they had learned skill 
in the handling and building of seaworthy craft was 


54 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


due, in large degree, to the training acquired in the fish- 
ing fleets, manned mostly from the south coast ports of 
England, which from the time of Cabot’s voyage had 
gone to the Banks of Newfoundland to fish for cod. 
In those bitter seas they had been schooled in the lessons 
that fitted them to defeat the Armada. In spite of their 
many conquests there is ample evidence that the Span- 
iards were poor seamen, and that their vessels were 
clumsy and unmanageable. 

The term “galleon” at this time had come to denote 
a vessel of war, and was applied to practically all the 
British fighting ships. The galleon had a high square 
forecastle, a low waist, and a high quarter-deck begin- 
ning at the mainmast and extending aft to the towering 
poop, with its lanterns and carved work. Across the 
decks were built wooden barricades, the “close-fights” 
mentioned by Drake, which were pierced for small can- 
non. These ships were “high-charged’—carrying high 
structures at the bow and stern as distinguished from 
the galleass, which was of lower build and employed 
oars or sweeps, as did many quite large vessels of the 
period. Drake’s pinnaces were of this type, but smaller, 
and of similar design were his “friggots” or frigates, a 
term which later on meant a fast sailing warship carry- 
ing guns on two decks. He used also small rowing and 
sailing vessels called galiots, as well as the shallop, a 
form of small round-sterned boat often mentioned in 
the chronicles of the early American colonists. The term 
“bark” was given to vessels which might reach 150 tons. 

All these vessels were rigged with square spritsails 
under the bows, no jibs, with square lower sails on the 
fore- and main-, and triangular lateens on the mizzen- 


THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 55 


mast. Only the fairly large vessels carried square top- 
sails on all three masts, and the largest ones had top- 
gallantsails as well. The sails were loosely furled by 
means of rope-yarns, which were cut when the sail was 
to be set. This accounts for the baggy appearance of 
the furled sails in the old pictures. The practice of 
decorating the sails with emblems and heraldic devices 
lasted all through the reign of Elizabeth. On the lower 
sails were laced breadths called bonnets which could be 
detached when it was desired to shorten sail, a device 
which was used, as I have stated, by the Vikings. The - 
lower yards were slung on tackles called jeers, to be 
lowered to the deck in heavy weather, a practice which 
has long disappeared from square-rigged vessels. 

I have gone into some detail in dealing with these 
features of rig and build for the purpose of emphasizing 
their sequence of development, with its bearing on the 
evolution of the sailing ship. 

The destruction of the Armada, which decided the 
future of the North American colonies, and at the same 
time settled the direction of their maritime growth, was 
like all great naval contests, a lesson of much importance 
in the development of ships. The Spanish war vessels, 
badly put together with iron nails, of massive construc- 
tion, with hull-planking five feet thick in places, over- 
weighted with lofty structures at bow and stern, were 
mastered by British ships of more rational design, 
handier of maneuver. The British fleet, contrary to the 
usual impression, contained many ships of large tonnage 
for that period. It was their superior handiness that 
gave them the advantage. The victors were largely vol- 
unteers, and many ships were drawn from the merchant 


56 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


fleet, manned by the self-reliant sailormen of Cornwail 
and Devon. 

By 1580 the mariners of England had a very fair idea 
of the coastal geography of North America, as the old 
charts show. The early descriptions of the new conti- 
nent, so confused with fable and fancy, were being re- 
placed by detailed information of the products and pos- 
sibilities of the great new empire. Destiny, in the hands 
of the Elizabethan adventurers, was taking heavy toll of 
their rivals and deciding the control of these resources. 
The ocean was being made ever more hazardous for the 
Spanish galleons, and the treasure ships, deep-laden with 
the spoil of the Incas and the Montezumas, were being 
often plundered or brought into English ports. Hardy 
men sailing out of Bristol and Plymouth were growing 
yearly more familiar with the Bank fisheries and the 
havens of the coast. As they came to sense the vastness 
of the timber resources of the North American forests 
they could not fail to mark their value to the ship-builder. 
Here was the wherewithal for the framing and masting 
of mighty fleets, when the time should come for their 
building, and doubtless there were those among the sea- 
men who, later on when the English should have a 
permanent foothold on the coast, would be ready to 
direct their energies toward nautical pursuits by the 
utilization of these resources. 

As the seamen of England fared in ever-growing 
fleets beyond the reaches of the Western Ocean, they 
perfected their technical skill in the school of experience. 
They studied the ships of other countries and applied the 
ideas thus acquired to their own barks and galleons. 
They improved their instruments of navigation, as, for 


oS SS 


THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, 57 


instance, in Davis’ quadrant, which replaced the cross- 
staff in making observations. They were learning the 
futility of the high-charged structures which held the 
ship in head winds and made her slow and unwieldy. 
Those admirable seamen, the Hollanders, produced at 
this period the sloop or sloep, with a fore-and-aft sail 
stretched on a diagonal sprit and a triangular jib, a 
handy rig which could be controlled from the deck by 
one or two men. 

Old Captain John Smith, in language at once quaint 
and breezy, gives us a glimpse of Jack Tar at work, 
three centuries ago or more: “The wind vears, git your 
star-board tracks aboord, hawle off your ley sheats, over- 
hawle the ley bowlin, ease your mayne brases, out with 
your spretsaile, flat the fore sheat, pike up the misen, or 
brade it. The ship will not wayer, loure the maine top 
saile, veare a fadom of your sheat. A flown sheate, a 
faire winde and a boune voyage!” 

All in all, the sixteenth century was perhaps the great- 
est period of maritime progress in the world’s history. 
With the voyages of Columbus began the era of true 
deep-sea navigation, when men spent days and weeks 
on the face of the waters without sighting land, and had 
to devise ways of determining their whereabouts on the 
lonely ocean. The Elizabethan Englishmen, in their en- 
terprises against the Spaniards, were often not far away 
from sheer piracy, but their sins were frequently re- 
deemed by the odds they took, as well as the reckless 
courage they displayed. 

Sir Richard Grenville, as Stevenson relates in his de- 
lightful paper on “The English Admirals,’ was a noted 
tyrant to his crew: a dark bullying fellow, who would 


58 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


chew and swallow wine-glasses by way of bravado. 
With a single ship, the Revenge, he joined battle with a 
Spanish fleet of fifty sail. All night long he fought, till 
his powder was gone, his ship was sinking with six feet 
of water in her hold and he himself near death with 
wounds. He had sunk two ships and driven two others 
ashore. He ordered the Revenge to be scuttled, and 
when the crew demurred and insisted on yielding, he 
called them traitors and dogs. “I wonder how many 
people have been inspired by this mad story, and how 
many battles have been won for England in the spirit 
thus engendered?’ asks Stevenson. 

And while the Drakes and the Grenvilles were battling 
against whatever odds their enemies might bring, other 
hardy sailors were daring the fogs and gales of the 
Banks of Newfoundland, pushing north with Davis into 
the Polar Seas, finding their way around the Cape of 
Good Hope to the Indies and planting their domain all 
along the coast of North America. 

Such was the spirit of the forefathers of the dauntless 
men who sailed out of the ports of the young American 
republic; who carried their flag to the furthest limits of 
the Seven Seas; to the Pole and round the Horn, as we 
shall see. It is for their descendants to hold the place 
they won among the seafaring races of the world. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE STUART AND GEORGIAN MERCHANT SHIPS 


WAZ HEN peace was at last made with the Spaniards, 
it brought a period of readjustment, with a slack- 
ening of effort in British nautical enterprises, as is usual 
after a long war. A good many reckless fellows who 
had fought with the Dons in the fleets of the gentlemen- 
adventurers found the lawful ways of commercial sea- 
faring too dull, and took to piracy. Some of our most 
picturesque tales of freebooters under the black flag date 
from this time. They were such a pest about the Eng- 
lish coast that drastic measures had to be taken to rid 
the Narrow Seas between Britain and the Continent of 
Europe of these corsairs. Very probably, the unrest of 
the epoch tended to drive many men from the homeland 
out to the American colonies, where they might seek 
opportunities in the founding of new fortunes. 

As we enter upon the period which saw the opening 
up of the British settlements in North America, and as 
we proceed through the colonial times, we become more 
and more conscious of the steadily increasing volume of 
transatlantic seafaring. The Western Ocean, as the 
sailor calls the North Atlantic, was still a lonely waste, 
with rarely a sail on the face of the mighty waters, but 
ships were faring out in greater numbers year by year, 


59 


60 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


bringing settlers to gather in the new footholds on the 
edge of the forest, and the traffic back and forth called 
insistently for new tonnage. We shall see later on how 
the pioneers turned their efforts from the very first to 
the building of vessels for fishing and coasting, but we 
are concerned for the present with the ships employed 
in the momentous task of bringing the two continents 
into close relationship, and with the men who manned 
them. 

If the sixteenth century was an epoch of maritime 
glory for England, it may be fairly claimed that in the 
seventeenth Holland led the van in the fleets of Europe, 
with the best ships and the ablest leaders. The influence 
of her shipbuilders at this period was so important a 
factor in the development of our later practices that no 
story of the American merchant ship would be complete 
without considering the stout vessels of the Hollanders. 
Other countries went to school to them, first the French, 
and later on the English. We ourselves, for reasons 
to be dealt with further along, took much of our inspi- 
ration from France, when the latter nation had learned 
to apply her lessons. 

In both England and Holland companies were formed 
in the early seventeenth century for trading with the 
East Indies. The Dutch also formed a West India Com- 
pany, which regarded the New Netherlands settlement 
on Manhattan Island as one of its minor enterprises. 
This company, indeed, was an outgrowth of a previous 
“New Netherlands” undertaking, but the idea of a 
colony on the Hudson was, for a time, thrown into the 
background of the prospect opened up by the scope of 
the newer enterprise. Many of the ships employed in 


STUART AND GEORGIAN SHIPS 61 


the development of the North American settlements were 
vessels that had been diverted from these and other Eng- 
lish and Dutch shipping activities for that purpose. 
Thus, the Jamestown settlers were brought over in three 
vessels belonging to the Muscovy Company, formed for 
trading between Russia and England, and it is said that 
the Mayflower, which brought over the Pilgrims, was 
employed in the Mediterranean trade. 

All through the histories of the early colonial strug- 
gles we sense the fact that the settlers were dependent 
on the rough sailors and the quaint, clumsy little ships 
that kept the lines of supply from the motherland. What 
sort of craft were they, and what did they look like? 
So much of the annals of the time is taken up by the 
struggles and conquests of the colonists that we get little 
idea from them of the nature of the ships that furnished 
the settlers with the manufactured articles they required, 
the tools, weapons, and better sorts of clothing and 
furniture. The insistent call for more man-power to aid 
in the mighty task of subduing the wilderness brought 
new bands of pioneers who had to be fed and trans- 
ported in all sorts of vessels. Let us glance at some of 
the ships most representative of the types and methods 
of the period, from which the colonists took their models 
for the little vessels they soon began to launch from the 
shores of the settlements. 

There is no doubt that the British shipwrights, from 
the lessons of the Elizabethan voyages, were learning 
sounder principles of design in the form of hulls and 
better methods of judging the probable behavior of ships 
at sea under varying conditions, from their lines on the 
building-ways. Yet the stern and upper-works were still 


62 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


too high and heavy for handiness of maneuver. The 
Hollanders, perhaps from the fact that their shallow 
waters forbade the overcharging of their vessels, as tend- 
ing to give them too much draft of water, brought their 
height down to a more rational plan. The tendency 
toward more modern practice in this respect appears 
more pronounced in their vessels than in those of the 
English. Then, too, they constructed hulls of remark- 
able strength. Whatever a Dutchman builds is built to 
last. Their fishing galiots, which they still build in 
much the same fashion as they have done for genera- 
tions, are said by competent judges to be the stoutest 
vessels afloat. The wars between England and Holland 
during the seventeenth century resulted in captures on 
both sides, and the English found much to study in the 
prizes thus made. The fore-and-aft rig, as developed 
from the Dutch sloep, has probably been carried to a 
higher degree of perfection in the United States than 
anywhere else in the world in our enormous schooners. 
We owe the origin of this form of rig to the vessels 
used in Holland for the navigation of their canals and 
shallow coastal waters, stout little vessels rigged with 
sails having a diagonal spar, or sprit, to hold up the 
peak (the upper after corner), the forward edge being 
hoisted up the mast on hoops. This rig has lasted down 
to our day, being still used on ships’ boats and other 
small craft. The Dutch sloeps were fitted with lee- 
boards at the sides to hold them up to the wind, a device 
from which came the centerboard so familiar in small 
American sailboats. 

The Dutch at this period were carrying on a heavy 
traffic with the East around the Cape of Good Hope, for 


A DutcH SLOEP; FROM THIS TYPE WAS DERIVED THE FORE-AND-AFT 


Ric, IN NORTHERN WATERS. 


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STUART AND GEORGIAN SHIPS 65 


which they built many fine vessels. They drove the 
Portuguese from their Indian possessions, and thus 
founded the Dutch colonial empire. Some of their ships 
plied between Holland and the New Netherlands, and it 
was a Dutch vessel that brought the first negro slaves to 
America, landing them at Jamestown, Virginia, in 16109. 
Probably she did not differ much from the ships shown 
in the picture. 

I have emphasized the maritime importance of Hol- 
fand in the early seventeenth century because of the 
strong influence of her sailors and shipbuilders on the 
English and French. The latter were very active on the 
sea as the period of Louis XV, with the predominance 
of France on the European continent, made the power 
of that nation an important factor, not only in Europe, 
but in North America. As it was the policy of England 
to challenge her rivals in the domination of the seas, she 
did not fail to take issue, first with the Dutch and then 
with the French, till the victories of Nelson established 
her supremacy. These wars, with their constant de- 
mands on ships and seamen, and the valuable lessons 
learned from the captured vessels, had a great influence 
on ship-building, which was strongly felt in the Ameri- 
can colonies when they came to practise the art on a 
large scale. 

The seventeenth century saw, then, a constantly grow- 
ing traffic out of the English, Dutch, and French sea- 
ports with their colonies in North America, in large 
ships and small. Let us see if we can form a picture of 
a typical vessel, engaged in this traffic. 

Should we visit a ship of the largest class as she lay 
at her dock, we should first notice, as we came up under 


66 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


her bows, the long beak, sweeping up and out in a com- 
pound curve under the bowsprit. It is built of heavy 
timber, and terminates in a beautifully carved figure- 
head, in the designing of which much fancy might be 
employed. It might be a mythical lion, or other animal, 
or perhaps a group with figures. The beak would be 
enriched along its length with scrolls and heraldic shields, 
painted and gilded in ornate fashion. Close in to the 
hull a heavy tarred band of hemp rope, passing around 
the main timber of the beakhead, secures the bowsprit 
against the up-strain of the stays and other gear lead- 
ing aloft to the foremast—the “gammon-lashing,” a 
feature now long obsolete. The massive bowsprit has 
a square spritsail slung under it, and at its outer end a 
platform, or “top,” from which rises a vertical mast 
bearing a sprit topsail. A high forecastle is cut squarely 
across at the bow. The sides, or “topsides” of the hull 
round far in toward the deck, “tumble home” as a sailor 
would say, a feature that may still be found on some 
of our warships. Just abaft (back) of the foremast is 
the depressed waist-deck reaching to the mainmast. 
Here the quarter-deck begins, with a stairway in the 
center just abaft the mast. It is raised six or eight feet 
above the waist and goes back to the poop, which is ele- 
vated above the quarter-deck and extends to the stern 
railing, or taffrail, Under this poop-deck was the 
“round-house” containing the commander’s quarters, in 
later times termed the “coach.” Outside the stern, on 
each side, are quarter-galleries fitted with windows, 
where the captain and his guests may lounge at leisure. 
Similar quarter-galleries appeared on our men-of-war 
till very recent years. 


<, 
ot 
—— he 


LS aM 


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a) 


SHOWING A TYPICAL 


AFTERPART OF A LARGE MERCHANTMAN, ABOUT 1720, 


ARRANGEMENT OF DECK AND OTHER DETAILS. 


; neh si ee 
a atest arie 


STUART AND GEORGIAN SHIPS 69 


The stern-lanterns, sometimes large enough to hold a 
dozen people, were lighted with immense tallow candles, 
which later were replaced by oil lamps. The ships were 
brave with carving and gilding. Such a ship as we are 
considering might measure seventy feet from the keel 
to the uppermost point of the stern. 

The steersman had in front of him a square box, the 
“bittacle,’ from which was derived the modern binnacle. 
It contained two compasses with a light between. In 
this were stowed the log-line, sand-glass, and other im- 
plements of navigation. The time was kept by a half- 
hour glass. When the sand had run out, it was turned 
over by a quartermaster. This was the origin of ship’s 
time—eight bells to the watch of four hours—which still 
continues in use. The hemp cable of such a ship might 
be seven inches in diameter, and took up half the hold. 
It was no small task to handle these heavy rope cables 
with the crude devices then employed. When the anchor 
was dropped, men had to stand by at the hawse pipes, 
where the cable ran out, with buckets of water in case 
of fire from the friction. A’ full-rigged ship of the sev- 
enteenth century carried lower sails, topsails, and above 
them, topgallantsails. Only on a few warships do royals 
appear, above the topgallantsails. Not until the eigh- 
teenth century do we find triangular headsails, or Jibs, 
which, with the fore-and-aft staysails between the masts, 
were of Dutch origin. 

When it was necessary to repair or clean the ship’s 
bottom, she was careened by powerful tackle, as de- 
scribed in the preceding chapter. All sorts of methods 
were used to protect the ships from fouling or from the 
boring of the marine worm. Sometimes they were 


70 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


charred all over with a torch, in other cases coated with 
tar and hair and sheathed outside with thin planking, 
or sheet lead. They were also “paid” or given a coating 
of tallow and sulphur. It was not till late in the eigh- 
teenth century that the modern practise of sheathing 
vessels with copper was introduced. 

While some quite large ships were employed during 
the period of colonial settlement, it was more often the 
case that the venturesome pioneers crossed the stormy 
waste in vessels that would now be considered very 
small. The Mayflower was of but 180 tons, and might 
be classed in her period with some of the ill-found for- 
eign tramps of the present day. We have no really 
authentic picture of her, and know rather less of her de- 
tails than we do of those of the ships of Columbus. The 
merchant vessels of that time which served as standards 
of the best ship-building skill were the ships of the East 
India companies, which then, and for many years after- 
ward, were the finest in the world. 

“The United Company of Merchant Venturers of 
England Trading to the East Indies’ was the official title 
of the British organization, which was founded under 
Queen Elizabeth and lasted for two hundred and thirty 
years. A long book might be written dealing with the 
fragrant history of this great maritime institution, which 
was often referred to as “John Company.” Its impor- 
tance to our purpose, however, is due to the great influ- 
ence it had on our sea-history, representing as it did 
the leadership of the shipbuilding art through all the 
generations of its career. As early.as 1609 a ship of 
1209 tons, the Trade’s Increase, was built for this ser- 


EarLy SEVENTEENTH CENTURY DUTCH INDIAMEN REFITTING FOR A 
COLONIAL VOYAGE. 


vay ete) iy {i ht) 
ka del aes oo ee 
ute an is, 5 a £ 


Pe PVT IAG 


STUART AND GEORGIAN SHIPS 73 


vice, and her successors, during many years afterward, 
were the noblest vessels of the merchant marine. 

These wall-sided, full-bottomed East Indiamen carried 
enormous crews, which were under naval discipline. 
They flew the long pennant of the British Navy and 
were operated regardless of expense, making leisurely 
voyages round the Cape of Good Hope and taking eigh- 
teen months out and back. One likes to imagine the 
brave old ships, manned by the cheery tars of romance, 
with plenty of music and dancing on the quarter-deck. 
They “snugged down” at night, taking in all their can- 
vas but the topsails, however fine the weather. These 
were the stately vessels that opened up the sea route 
to the Indies, later to be followed by many a hard-driy- 
ing Yankee skipper out of Salem, Boston, or New York. 

Let us pause a little here to take a glance at Jack 
Tar himself, as he appeared in those long-vanished years. 
Those were the days of voyages out of sight of land for 
weeks and months on end, so that a sailor became, as it 
were, a native of the ocean, and a stranger on the shore, 
even of his own country. This bred a class of sailor 
who seemed of a different race from the landsman. He 
was given to wearing rings in his ears, and tied his hair 
into a long pigtail at the back. He spoke a dialect of 
his own, not to be easily understood by shore folk, and 
his costume, adopted to his special trade, marked him 
for a sailor, not to be mistaken for anything else wher- 
ever he might go. At the period with which we are 
dealing he wore a loose frock or shirt of coarse duck, 
a broad leathern belt or a sash wound round his waist, 
wide flapping breeches reaching to his knees, or, in some 
of the prints of the time, a short skirt or apron. Ashore 


74 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


he would wear rough stockings with buckled shoes, but 
aboard ship he went usually barefoot. He was ignorant, 
superstitious, and irresponsible, fond of rum and coarse 
revelry. Yet in those days, when hardly anybody else, 
rich or poor, saw much of foreign lands or ways, he bore 
an aura of romance and mystery, of salt winds and surg- 
ing seas, of lands beyond the sunset. Probably to Jack 
himself, accustomed to the coarsest of food, often spoiled 
or scanty, and likely, as he was, on frequent occasions, 
to be flogged with a rawhide cat-o’-nine-tails, the ro- 
mance was often a doubtful quantity, yet he has man- 
aged to leave a tradition of jovial generosity, of delight 
in hornpipes and rude choruses, of toasts to “sweethearts 
and wives” at sundown, which shows that his life must 
have had a share of simple pleasures. ‘There was, too, 
a background of order and ceremony that lent a certain 
dignity to ship-life peculiarly its own. 

The first pleasure yacht known in England, ancestor 
of the fleets that now follow this royal sport, was the 
Mary, presented by the Dutch to Charles IH, and fol- 
lowed by the Bezan, often mentioned in the entertaining 
diary of Samuel Pepys. The word “yacht” is derived 
from the Norwegian jaegt. From these vessels was 
evolved the cutter, a single-masted craft rigged with 
fore-and-aft mainsail, foresail, and jib, carrying a square 
topsail and sometimes a topgallantsail over it. Such 
cutters figure largely in the sea tales of the early nine- 
teenth century, especially as coast-guard vessels in the 
prevention of smuggling. The runners of contraband 
goods employed most frequently the vessels known as 
luggers, these being rigged with lug-sails, and having two 
or three masts. A lug-sail is laced to a light spar at the 


STUART AND GEORGIAN SHIPS 75 


top, and hoisted by a single halyard about one-third way 
along this gaff from the forward end. A ring, or “par- 
ral” secures the spar to the mast. It is a simple and 
handy form of sail having but one inconvenience, that 
it must be dipped and the gaff shifted to the lee side of 


CUTTER AND LUGGER, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 


the mast, whenever the boat is put about on the other 
tack. This rig is common still among the fishermen of 
Northern Europe. The luggers that figure so largely in 
the romances and tales of the smugglers and beach- 
combers of the eighteenth century were quite large ves- 
sels, sometimes reaching 150 tons. The French em- 
ployed many of them in smuggling, privateering, and 


=f THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


even for oversea voyages, and were skilled in building 
very fast craft of this type, with three masts, on the 
foremost of which was a squaresail. These vessels were 
closely studied in our seaports, and their models had a 
great influence on the Baltimore clippers which were 
afterward built for privateering in the Revolution. 

It is very necessary, in order to get a true conception 
of the types of vessels from which the first American 
builders drew their ideas, to consider the development 
of the fore-and-aft rig, a style of sail arrangement which 
has always been in great favor with our seamen. 
Broadly speaking, there are two types of sails, those 
arranged to hoist on rings, hoops, or lacings up and 
down a spar or a stay, and to set lengthwise of the ship 
when set, called fore-and-aft sails, and those which are 
bent at the upper edge to yards slung across the masts, 
called square sails. Vessels may be rigged with both 
forms of sail in various combinations, or else exclusively 
with fore-and-aft sails. It has always been found, in 
long-voyage navigation, desirable to use squaresails to a 
greater or less degree. Large vessels rigged only with 
fore-and-aft sails are likely to be hard to steer in a 
heavy seaway with the wind astern, and the long heavy 
booms are apt to dip into the seas with the roll from 
side to side. Then, too, our great schooners require 
tremendously long spars, which are hard to replace in 
foreign ports if they carry away anything aloft. Thus 
they are mainly employed in coasting voyages. 

Up to the early part of the eighteenth century the old 
square-riggers carried only one fore-and-aft sail—the 
triangular lateen on the mizzen. It was then that the 
staysails appeared between the masts, and the jibs at the 


STUART AND GEORGIAN SHIPS 77 


bows. At the same time the lateen aft become a quadri- 
lateral affair, like the sail of a modern sloop. This is 
the “spanker” of a full-rigged ship of later years. All 
these fore-and-aft sails were found useful when the 
ship was running close-hauled on the wind—that is, 
when the wind was coming from an angle well forward 
of a right angle with the keel. Our friends the Hol- 
landers were the first to introduce them on square-rigged 
vessels, and they had learned their advantages from their 
sloeps, schuyis, and other fore-and-aft rigged craft em- 
ployed on their canals. These canals, especially where 
they passed through the towns, were often too narrow 
for the spreading yards required for squaresails, In- 
deed, it was for the same reason characteristic of the 
small brigs and other square-riggers used so much by the 
Netherland coasting traders to give their sails a good 
deal of hoist, while cutting them very narrow, and they 
could be recognized at sea by this peculiarity. The old 
Dutch sloep, forefather of the modern sloop, often had 
two masts, and no doubt, when our early American build- 
ers originated the schooner as we now know it, they 
were influenced by the Hollanders. 

The great advantage of the fore-and-aft, as distin- 
guished from the square rig, is that it can be handled 
by fewer men, as it is not necessary to go aloft to set 
the sails. This was vitally important to the early Amer- 
icans, as the population was so sparse that it was not 
easy to find men for large crews. 

I shall have occasion to speak in the following chap- 
ters of the many rigs used in the craft constructed by 
our early builders, which played such a vital part in 
welding together the settlements on the coast, and of 


78 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS, 


their relation to the vessels and seamanship familiar to 
the settlers in the lands whence they came. Details are 
to be found right up to the present day, in American 
vessels, which show very plainly to the experienced eye 
the particular national or local origins from which they 
have been adapted. All the peoples who took part in 
the settlement of our continent contributed, in some 
degree, to the combination of features which distin- 
guished our vessels from those of other nationalities. 

And so as we have seen, the men of the sea, from their 
ancient beginnings, through generations of experiment 
and painful effort, brought the sailing ship to such a 
degree of development that it changed little till the nine- 
teenth century. 

We are now to enter upon the period of its adaptation 
to their needs and purposes by our hardy forefathers, 
who ultimately carried the Stars and Stripes at their 
mastheads to the uttermost ends of the earth. 


CHAPTER V 
COLONIAL MARITIME BEGINNINGS 


a we read that in 1607 the Popham colonists on 
the Kennebec River, discouraged by their short 
sojourn in the wilderness, built “a faire pinnace of 30 
tons’ to carry them back to the homeland, we may 
breathe a regret that the poor little ship, harbinger of 
mighty fleets, could not somehow have been preserved 
for the veneration of our sailors. This Virginia must 
have been a stout little craft, however rough her con- 
struction, for she reached England in safety and made 
several transatlantic voyages. Just such a “pinnesse” 
she was, no doubt, as those of Drake and Frobisher, 
with a “flush” deck (having no built-up forecastle or 
after deck). Probably, she carried a single squaresail 
on the fore and main, and a triangular lateen on the 
mizzenmast. 

That these colonists possessed the skill to build such 
a vessel, as did their successors soon to swarm along 
the coast, proves that aptitude for seafaring that was 
the heritage of their race. The New Netherland Hol- 
landers shared this aptitude, and built the Ourust of 16 
tons, as early as 1615. 

When the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth, she 
brought aboard of her, in sections, a small shallop. This 
boat had been somewhat damaged, we are told, having 


79 


80 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


been lain upon and bent out of shape, in the crowded 
hold, but they made shift to put it together. It rendered 
invaluable service to the colonists in exploring the coves 
near by and inlets, and in fishing to eke out their scanty 
store of food. With their shallop, it did not take them 
long to find out this precious resource in the doubt and 
distress of the first winter. So was born the longshore 
fishery of New England, a thriving trade to this day, 
and one which has had an inestimable value in the up- 
building of that section. 

Strung out along the coast, the far-stretching forests 
at their backs, the newcomers looked out upon the ocean 
in the spirit of the early Nantucket settler, who said, 
pointing to the sea: “there is the green pasture where our 
children’s grandchildren will go for their bread.” 
Hardly had they taken time to provide themselves with 
some necessary rough shelter when the axe and the 
adze were echoing along the lonely shores, and the hulls 
of their little vessels began to take form. In 1631, on 
the fourth of July, was begun the building of a vessel 
on the Mystic River, which runs by Charlestown of 
Bunker Hill fame into Boston Harbor. This vessel, the 
Blessing of the Bay, was a sloop of 60 tons, carrying, 
no doubt, a square topsail, like all the sloops of that 
day. Only a decade later was built at Salem a ship of 
300 tons, a very large vessel for the times. Thus the 
industry of shipbuilding began in New England almost 
with the very date of settlement. As early as 1640 the 
Salem ship Desire was trading to the West Indies for 
cotton, tobacco, and Negro slaves, and she made the 
very creditable passage of twenty-three days to England 
not long afterward. 


) ys 


ue 


a 


$L00P, WITH SQUARE CHEBACEO PINIC LUC-RIGGEQ — _KETCH, WITH. 
‘ FORE -A, AF, 
TOPSA/L SHALLOP aide, op 


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veh 


NETCH WITH SNOW WITH DOU, 
SQUARE R/C LOWER Mi 


Types OF RIGS AND VESSELS COMMON IN COLONIAL Days, BUT NOW 
OBSOLETE. (AFTER VARIOUS OLD PRINTS AND PAINTINGS.) 


COLONIAL BEGINNINGS 83 


As the early vessels, large and small, begin to appear 
along the coast, we come upon many rigs and types which 
have now become obsolete. One of the commonest was 
the “ketch” or “catch.” This was a two-masted vessel, 
square-rigged on both masts in the older examples, with 
a tall mainmast almost at the center, and a short after- 
mast. Later on the after-mast was fore-and-aft rigged, 
and later still the mainmast carried a large fore-and-aft 
sail with a square topsail above it, much like what is now 
called a yawl rig. The ketch has long since disappeared 
from our waters, but the term is still used on the Eng- 
lish coast. Then we have the “snow,” square-rigged on 
both masts, resembling the early brig. The brig, a vessel 
with two square-rigged masts, not unlike a ship with the 
mizzenmast left off, was one of the commonest types of 
sailing-craft up to the middle of the nineteenth century, 
and figures largely in our sea literature. Nowadays this 
term is applied only to the few “hermaphrodite brigs” 
which still ply up and down the coast, and which are 
square-rigged on the foremast only. Another common 
colonial type was the “pink,” or “‘pinkie’—a vessel sharp 
at both ends, somewhat resembling the Viking ships, but 
having a straight raking stern-post on which the rudder 
was hung. She was rigged with two fore-and-aft sails 
of nearly equal size, either with or without a jib. In 
the former rig she was a familiar type along the Maine 
coast till very recent years, usually styled a “‘pink-starned 
schooner.” The ‘“Chebacco boat” of the post-revolu- 
tionary period was of the latter rig. The name “smack” 
has come nowadays to be applied to almost any vessel 
‘employed in fishing, but the early smack appears to have 
been sloop-rigged, with a projecting beak at the bow. 


84 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS, 


The broad and shallow hull with a centerboard instead 
of a lee-board, forerunner of the “skimming dishes’ of 
later yachting fame, shows a decided Dutch influence. 
The sloop of colonial times and for long afterwards 
continued to carry a square topsail, sometimes even a 
topgallantsail, as did the schooner. 

Various were the types developed along the coast, to 
meet local conditions, like the “sharpie” with square 
sides, and the “bug-eye” of Chesapeake Bay, with two 
triangular, or “leg-of-mutton” sails hoisting on rings on 
the sharply raking masts. All these vessels show the 
influence of the effort to find simple handy rigs that 
could be managed by small crews. 

But the most characteristic of American rigs, the 
schooner, a handsome, fast, and easily handled type of 
vessel, merits our special notice. No class of sail craft 
has been so universal with us, and none has been further 
developed by our compatriots. It is possibly an error 
to suppose that this rig was derived from the sloop or 
cutter by merely adding another mast. There is reason 
to believe that its progenitor was a special type of Dutch 
sloep which was forty or more feet over all and about 
nine feet beam. She carried two masts, with fore-and- 
aft sails having a very short gaff and set loose-footed— 
that is, not laced to the boom (a feature that lasted in 
Europe until the famous America showed them the ad- 
vantage of thus lacing the foot of the sail). She hoisted 
no jib, her foremast being stepped right up in the bow. 
Craft of this type were very probably employed by the 
Hollanders who settled New York. At Gloucester, Mas- 
sachusetts, the first true schooner was built in 1713. As 
she was launched someone exclaimed, “see how she 


COLONIAL BEGINNINGS 8c 


scoons!’’ “A schooner let her be!” said her builder. To 
“scoon,” we are told, was to skip like a flat stone over 
the surface of the water. 

Such was the origin of the schooner, and anyone who 
has ever been to Gloucester will tell you that they still 
know something about schooners there, for the finest 


. 
i 
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S LHIA 
at ——— 
SY honk 
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At GLOUCESTER THE First SCHOONERS WERE BUILT. 


fishing craft in the world of that type hail from that 
port. 

While these native classes of small craft were being 
developed, the builders of deep-sea shipping were making 
remarkable progress. Toiling at first under the pres- 
sure of bitter necessity, the conditions incident to life in 
the new country spurred the shipwrights and merchants 


86 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


of the seaboard to incredible efforts, which resulted in a 
rapid growth of maritime activities. In the teeth of 
every sort of opposition and obstruction by their com- 
petitors in England, whose jealousy led them to strive 
to strangle the new industry at its birth, the mariners 
of the colonies, backed by their boundless resources. in 
timber, were able not only to gain ground in direct com- 
petition, but to sell much tonnage to foreign countries. 
During the forty years from 1674 to 1714, they built 
in New England alone 1332 vessels, of which 239 were 
sold abroad. Said the royal Governor, Bellomont, at 
this period, “I believe there are more good vessels be- 
longing to the town of Boston than to all Scotland and 
Ireland.” 

In the pre-revolutionary fleets of the colonies, New 
England must be credited with the major part. The 
Hollanders of Manhattan, the Quakers of Philadelphia, 
and the Marylanders to the south of them, were by no 
means false to the amphibious traditions of their fore- 
fathers, but the shore-dwellers of the more northern set- 
tlements, having the fisheries to school their sons “‘to 
the wet ploughing,” with their many havens and inlets 
on the edge of the forest, built vessels, as one may say, 
in their very front yards. The mast trade with England, 
under official encouragement, took on large proportions. 
They sent many shiploads of pipe-staves, for the con- 
struction of “pipes,” or wine-barrels, to Spain, Portugal, 
and France. ‘They used dried or salted fish to trade 
with, lacking a staple of export like tobacco, and the 
same vessels that caught the fish might be utilized in its 
shipment abroad. The first vessel regularly built for a 
transatlantic packet was constructed at Richmond Island, 


COLONIAL BEGINNINGS 87 


Maine, in 1631. The shore whaling trade was carried 
on by vessels which towed in their catch to be “‘tried 
out’ for the oil in sheds on the shore, and it early be- 
came an important industry about Cape Cod, Nantucket, 
and New Bedford. 

It took many a long year, and cost an appalling price, 
in life, treasure, and lost reputations, to establish some- 
thing like a distinction between that which was right 
and honorable, and that which was criminal in traffic 
on the sea. The wars against the Dutch and the French 
bred a class of reckless men, accustomed to rough deeds, 
in the privateers and letters of marque. A privateer was 
a private armed vessel, not attached to the regular pub- 
lic navy, licensed to prey on the enemy, while “letters 
of marque,” so called, were permits issued to trading 
vessels, authorizing them to make such prizes as they 
might encounter while in the pursuit of their calling, 
from vessels sailing under hostile flags. It was but a 
short step from these activities to sheer piracy. The 
law-abiding people of the seaports exclaimed loudly 
against the riot and disorder of the rough privateersmen 
who swarmed in the shipping centers. All along the 
coast, peaceful traders suffered from lawless outrage, 
often, as was well known, with the connivance of people 
high in worldly station ashore. As early as 1623 the 
notorious Dixey Bull ran rampant among the traders and 
fishermen of the northeast, till he was finally laid by the 
heels. As the seventeenth century drew on there were 
signs that public opinion was taking a definite stand 
against these miscreants. It was imperative, for in the 
first years of the eighteenth century it was officially re- 
ported that there were fifteen hundred pirates on the 


88 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


coast, whose principal nests were at Cape Fear and in 
the Bahama Islands. Much romance has been written 
about piracy, but the chances are that it was a squalid 
enough business. The dens of these ruffians must have 
been filthy, sweltering warrens, reeking with fever and 
loud with brawling and coarse debauchery. 

It became evident in 1718 that the day of reckoning 
had arrived. An English fleet seized New Providence 
in the Bahamas, and swept the islands clear of these 
“gentlemen of fortune.’ There was at the time a no- 
torious character named Steve Bonnet, once a British 
officer, who had been terrorizing the southern coast. 
He was dealt with by Colonel Rhett of Charleston, he 
and his entire crew being hanged. More dreaded still 
was one Edward Thatch, famous in the lore of piracy 
as “Blackbeard.” He is represented in a quaint portrait 
of the time with his beard plaited into many braids, a 
flaming slow-match hung over each ear, and a complete 
arsenal of weapons adorning his person. An expedi- 
tion sent out of Virginia rounded up this desperado and 
put him to death. And so the coasts were policed and 
for a time made safe, and peaceful traders might follow 
the sea “on their lawful occasions.” 

It was at this time that the famous Captain Kidd made 
his short and picturesque passage across the stage in our 
early sea history: 


My name was Captain Kidd, as I sailed 
My sinful footsteps slid—God’s laws I did forbid, 
But so wickedly I did, as I sailed. 


And yet it would seem that the captain may have merited 
a certain sympathy. He was no worse than many an- 


“THE ROUGH SEAPORT TOWNS SWARMED WITH SAILORS, RIGGERS, AND 
KINDRED ARTISANS,” 


— * ; 
\ate } +‘ 
y, . con Te | 


COLONIAL BEGINNINGS gl 


other roving skipper of his time, and he had the backing 
of men in high places during his career, men who ex- 
pected to profit largely by his voyages, but who did 
not hesitate to betray and abandon him when he fell 
into the toils of the law. Let us glance at the main 
- facts of Kidd’s final Odyssey, gathered from various 
sources. 

As we have remarked, the notions of the seventeenth 
and eighteenth centuries regarding the ethics of what 
we would now call rank piracy were rather hazy. There 
were in those days many corsairs operating along the 
east coast of Africa from Madagascar to the Indian 
Ocean, Levantines, renegades from Europe—every kind 
of scoundrel and beach-comber in the Near and Far 
East. Some of the merchants of New York, Newport, 
and other towns along the coast had found it profitable 
to send out vessels to traffic with these fellows, buying 
from them goods, the origin of which was more than 
questionable, and such trade was not condemned by pub- 
lic opinion, according to the standards then current. 
Governor Bellomont, the Royal head of the New York 
and Massachusetts colonies, with several associates, 
fitted out Kidd for a voyage to the East, some say to 
recover cargoes seized by the Indian Ocean pirates, while 
others have believed that he was expected to act in collu- 
sion with them. By and by stories of misdeeds, of the sei- 
zure of ships belonging to lawful traders, began to make 
a great noise in England and the colonies. When Kidd 
had gotten back to his headquarters at Gardiner’s Is- 
land, near Montauk Point, he was persuaded to come to 
Boston under safe-conduct from Bellomont. While 
there he was seized. His trial and execution under a 


92 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


cloud of reprobation have made of him the classic pirate 
of our history. 

Such, in briefest outline, was the sad end of Captain 
Kidd. His fabled treasure, even to this day, is the ob- 
ject of many a quest along the sandy shores of Long 
Island and about Montauk Point, where the cadenced 
roar of the breakers is never silent, and the ghosts of 
vanished pirates walk the lonely beaches in the dark of 
the winter moon. 

A feature of the early ship-building that would appear 
quaint and picturesque in our time was the use of oxen, 
universal as the main source of tractive power. We 
must not forget, in these days of engines and motors, 
that our recent ancestors were hardly better off than the 
ancient Greeks and Romans in their means of transpor- 
tation. To haul out a mighty pine, perhaps three feet 
thick at the butt, and suitable for the mainmast of a 
large ship, called for a team of thirty oxen or more, 
which had to be trained to work together like soldiers, 
at the word of command, and which, once started, had 
to be kept in motion. Vessels of Io0 tons, or even 
larger, were sometimes built on the uplands at quite a 
distance from the water, and hauled down to the shore 
by as many as two hundred oxen, a task which called 
for no little maneuvering skill. Some of the vessels 
were built complete at places seven or eight miles from 
the launching points, then dragged in sections to the 
beach and re-assembled. 

Our forefathers were greatly hampered by restrictions 
placed by the home-country on their oversea trade. 
All their resource was employed in finding means to 
dodge or circumvent these laws, which they regarded as 


COLONIAL BEGINNINGS 93 


unjust, though they could hardly be regarded, by the 
standards of the times, as unfair. They built what were 
called “Jew’s rafts’ of timber chained and lashed to- 
gether in the form of a ship. The British law which 
forbade the importation of colonial products in anything 
but British ships did not apply, so they claimed, to these 
rafts, on the ground that they were not ships. On these 
contrivances they dared the wrath of the Western 
Ocean, and they were navigated across to England, as 
well as to the West Indies. 

The traffic along shore was very active. The Down- 
Easters would start with such local produce as they 
could gather to make a cargo for their little craft, and 
would work along from port to port, carrying away 
anything they might pick up to trade with, or doing any 
job of transportation, bartering or huckstering as they 
went. No doubt, in these practices the self-reliant mari- 
ners got the training that led them afterwards to the 
ends of the earth in ships which resembled floating 
shops, managed by men who were sailors, merchants, 
and salesmen at the same time, and which might not 
be heard from at home for months, or even years, The 
vessels used in the coast trade were mostly ketches and 
sloops, with a certain proportion of snows, schooners, 
or brigantines of from forty to fifty tons. The term 
“bark” was loosely applied to craft of different rigs, 
and there were “‘barka-longas” and “‘fly-boats,” the latter 
from the Dutch flbot, a small craft, usually a sloep, 
employed in short voyages. 

In spite of a financial depression from 1713 till 1745, 
these tenacious and hard-working people continued to 
progress in their seafaring enterprises. They launched 


04 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


a 700-ton ship at New London in 1725, and they sold 
many vessels abroad. Shipwrights were in demand, and 
there was loud complaint in England that the colonial 
yards had drawn away so many of their men that there 
were not enough left to carry on the work. Just before 
the Revolution, in 1769, the North American colonies 
launched 389 vessels, of which 113 were square-rigged. 
These vessels averaged a little more than 50 tons and 
probably the largest was not more than 200 tons register. 

During these years of fruitful effort in the laying of 
foundations for our fine sea tradition, there was another 
form of ocean traffic which, though it was but a minor 
factor in the broader spread of legitimate commerce, 
must yet be noted among the elements of any truthful 
picture. This was the trade in slaves, usually called the 
Guinea or rum trade, for rum, often of poisonous qual- 
ity and infamously adulterated, was the principal cur- 
rency. Only a few ports made of it an important inter- 
est—Newport in Rhode Island most notably—though 
public opinion was not aroused against it till after the 
Revolution. The vessels engaged in it were seldom 
more than fifty tons. Their owners made hypocritical 
claims that the poor Negroes were being brought into 
the light of Christian civilization, but the country paid 
dearly in the end for the cruel business. The great 
markets for salt fish were the West Indies, Madeira, and 
the Canaries. From these ports the vessels would pro- 
ceed to the Bight of Benin on the west coast of Africa 
and take on slaves, buying them with rum, then back to 
the West Indies, where they were partly traded for 
molasses, to be distilled into more rum in New England. 
The sufferings of the poor blacks on these little vessels, 


SLOOP . 1729 


SHIP "ULYSSES"- (794 


SCHOONER "BALTICK'=/765 


el ee 
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SSS 


Se gic 
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SH/P “GRAND TURK” -/781 BRIGANTINE “SUKEY'"~ "S75 


SNOW "CRUGER '~ 1788 SCHOONER “FAME" = 1795 


HULL-PROFILES OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN VESSELS, FROM 
VARIOUS OLD PRINTS AND SHIP-PORTRAITS. THIS WAS A PERIOD 
OF EXPERIMENT AND GROWTH, OUT OF WHICH RESULTED THE 


STURDY SHIPS OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, 


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nT a: 


Co 


Te ata NN 


COLONIAL BEGINNINGS 97 


cooped up in the noisome holds on voyages lasting often 
several months, and the utter brutality of the traffic 
make a sorrowful history, which did not wholly end till 
well into the nineteenth century. 

All through the latter half of the eighteenth century 
the best and fastest models for ships were those 
of the French. They had profited by their study of the 
vessels of the Hollanders, and both England and her 
North American colonies, in turn, took their standards 
at this period from France. These French luggers and 
fast-sailing ships and brigs had as a characteristic model 
a beautifully rounded, but not sharp, bow, easy “stream- 
line’ hulls, with their greatest width, or beam, forward 
of the center. They were finely finished, and were the 
fastest vessels of their time. “Their grandparents,” says 
Captain Clark, in The Clipper Ship Era, “also might 
easily be identified in the Italian galleys of Genoa and 
Venice.” The same writer remarks: “it had been the 
policy of Great Britain to keep her American colonies 
as much as possible in ignorance concerning naval af- 
fairs, doubtless from fear of their growing ambition. 
They were therefore led to copy the models of French 
vessels, not only from choice, on account of their excel- 
lence, but from necessity as well.” 

Again and again, as we pore over the yellow and 
moldering logbooks of the old-time shipmasters; as we 
bring to light, forgotten in battered sea chests, the letters 
of the eighteenth century; as we learn to decipher, in 
fragments of old records, still existing in many a nook 
and corner of the seacoast towns, the scattered bits of 
local history dealing so often with shipwrecks and hair- 
breadth escapes of long ago, we feel the glamour of the 


98 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


romance of the sea. In their little ships, which could 
easily be carried on the deck of a modern liner, these 
hardy men fared to the outports, to unknown and bar- 
barous lands where no white sailor had ever gone before. 
They dared to run the gauntlet of the corsairs, risking 
not alone the common dangers of the deep, but torture 
and slavery in the hands of ruthless rovers out of the 
Barbary hornet’s nests. Without charts, on unknown 
and unlighted coasts, they fared to the south, to the east 
and north “at peril of the sea” in search of trade and 
the yield of the ocean. Many of them knew nothing of 
scientific navigation. They kept their dead-reckoning 
on a board with a piece of chalk, and asked their posi- 
tion of any ship they might meet. As practical seamen, 
however, they asked no odds of anyone. Their senses 
were sharpened and their judgment trained in the hard 
school of experience. They went where they willed, and 
they would not be denied. Salt water was their chosen 
element, and they led the way for the dauntless men 
who, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, made 
seafaring enterprise a dominant interest of the American 
people. 

The rough seaport towns swarmed with sailors, with 
riggers, ship-chandlers, ropemakers, shipwrights, and 
kindred artisans. Boys lived about the shipping and 
learned the lore of the sea with their alphabets. Every 
vessel that sailed bore with it several lads, often not 
more than ten or twelve years old. There were boys 
not more than fourteen, in the colonial times and later, 
who had been before the mast to Spain, to Africa, or 
even round the Horn. A boat was his natural vehicle 
of locomotion for any boy in the ports, on the outlying 


COLONIAL BEGINNINGS 99 


islands, or along the coast. He learned to sail a dory 
or a skiff, or to scull with a single oar, as a boy learns 
nowadays to play ball or ride a bicycle, and as soon as 
he was old enough to be of some use aboard a vessel 
he sailed away to take his chances with the pirates or the 
snarling gales off Hatteras like the rest. I shall have 
something to say later on about the extreme youth of 
so many of our mates and skippers out of Salem and the 
other seaports, but it seemed natural enough, in the early 
days when every hand was needed, that boys should go 
to sea at ages when they are in the lower school grades 
in these present times. 

As the time approached for the colonies to branch off 
from the British parent-stem, a solid foundation had 
been laid for the mighty trade structure of the later 
generations. Already the special characteristics of the 
American ship were becoming evident. 

Aquatic birds had inspired the ancients in their ship- 
forms; at the period we are dealing with the expression 
“cod’s head and mackerel’s tail” began to be current in 
connection with hulls; it was the fish whose lines were 
studied. Economy of man-power, simplicity of con- 
struction, to permit prompt utilization of the abundant 
timber at hand—these considerations bore vitally on the 
matter. Our forefathers brought with them a fund of 
nautical tradition, made up of elements derived from the 
ancient races of the Mediterranean as well as from the 
Norse mariners, whose aptitude for the sea was their 
direct heritage. They found themselves in a situation 
which forced them immediately to the ocean for the re- 
source of the fisheries, and as their most convenient 
pathway of communication. Their problem was to 


100 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS, 


choose, out of their stock of knowledge\and experience, 
those elements which might be quickest adapted to their 
needs. 

The larger ships of England were constructed of tim- 
ber which had lain seasoning in salt-water timber-docks 
till it had become almost incredibly hard and heavy. 
They were massively built, stout, seaworthy, and slow. 
The colonists had no time for the seasoning process, and 
they quickly learned to put together their craft with 
treenails and to improvise methods which, applied to the 
special conditions they had to meet, provided them with 
vessels which were strong, light, and supple. They were 
shipwise and sea-minded, alert to learn from one an- 
other, as from all sources at their command. Their 
study of French models was of the greatest service. The 
small fast vessels of the day, the brigs and schooners of 
the “Baltimore clipper” class, probably owed their origin 
to French influences. From the Dutch, in the develop- 
ment of fore-and-aft-rigged vessels, they drew much of 
value. In the Bank fisheries and the whaling trade, so 
early practiced by the colonists, they had an unequaled 
school of training. ‘Thus they were ready, when the 
time came for the launching of the American Ship of 
State, to embark on a career of seafaring enterprise 
which was to astonish the Old World, so that what Burke 
said in 1775 of the Yankee whalemen might quite as 
well have been applied to the other nautical undertakings 
of the American colonists: 


No sea but is vexed by their fisheries, no climate that is not 
a witness to their toil. Neither the perseverance of Holland, 
nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity 


COLONIAL BEGINNINGS IOI 


of English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of 
hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this 
recent people—a people who are still, as it were, in the gristle 
and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. 


CHAPTER VI 
THE MARINERS OF SALEM 


HE old port of Salem, in Massachusetts, unlike 
most of our early shipping centers, has left us 
something like an adequate record of her seafaring 
history. Her population did not exceed ten thousand in 
the days of her glory, more than a hundred years ago, 
when her ships fared to India, to Java, Madagascar, and 
the Fiji Islands; when, fifty years and more before the 
historic voyage of Commodore Perry, they visited Japan, 
and when Mozambique and Canton, the Society and 
Sandwich Islands were familiar ports of call for her 
stout-hearted mariners. Enthralling records exist in the 
old logbooks and journals, still to be seen in the Essex 
Institute in Salem, and the old town yet holds many a 
fragrant memory of Far-Eastern voyaging, while over 
it hovers the brooding spirit of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
himself the son of a Salem sea captain. 

Salem was fortunate in that with a population natur- 
ally inclined toward maritime pursuits, there foregath- 
ered a very exceptional group of far-seeing merchants, 
men of probity and vision, who had themselves, in most 
instances, voyaged as practical seamen and shipmasters, 
and who had thus a first-hand knowledge of the prob- 
lems they had to meet. For these reasons I propose to 


102 


THE MARINERS OF SALEM 103 


devote a chapter to the old seaport, in whose history 
may be found example of all that is most typical of our 
maritime story through the period embracing the Revo- 
lution and the War of 1812. 

At the beginning of the settlement, in 1626, the pio- 
neers set themselves to the building of small craft for 
fishing, like their fellow-colonists at Plymouth, and 
within ten years they were reaching out for trade, even 
as far as the West Indies. The sizeable ship Desire, 
previously mentioned, brought back a cargo of salt, cot- 
ton, and tobacco in 1640. From then on they gave their 
main energies to sea trading. In common with the other 
settlers they paid heavy toll to the French privateers and 
the Indians, and they struggled with the handicaps of 
restrictive laws imposed by the mother country. Hardly 
a one of their little smacks and snows but had to fight 
its way, and in 1677 no less than thirteen of their fishing 
ketches were taken by the Indians in one foray. The 
venomous pirates out of Sallee and Mogador, on the 
coast of Morocco, ranged all about the western shores 
of Europe and in the Mediterranean, and battles with 
these desperados were common incidents of almost every 
voyage. 

Their main commody of export was fish—dried cod, 
whale oil and bone, fish oil, and so on—so that the ocean 
itself was harvested to provide the wherewithal for their 
trade overseas. In their little ketches or sloops, rarely 
exceeding sixty tons, they thought nothing of crossing 
the Atlantic. A’ modern Bank fisherman is often more 
than double their tonnage. 

They felt no scruple about dodging the Royal Acts of 
Trade, which they considered unjust and unfair. Every 


104 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


effort was made by the British shipping interests to 
cripple the colonial enterprises, but the enforcement of 
these embarrassing laws remained very lax, and John 
Bull’s arm was far from being long enough to compel 
their application. When Captain Richard Derby of the 
famous Salem family of that name, was about to start 
for the West Indies in the schooner Volante, in the year 
1741, he was instructed to get a Dutch registry, if occa- 
sion offered, and to trade with the French under that 
flag. Such matters could be easily managed, he was 
informed, with “a little greasing.”” We need not sup- 
pose, however, that the laws of England dealing with 
their colonial trade were considered especially severe or 
selfish, by the standards of the time. They were, in fact, 
more liberal than those of other countries. The point I 
desire to bring out is, that the men of Salem, by their 
indomitable spirit, were able to overcome handicaps 
of every sort, and to extend their sea trade to the farth- 
est ends of the earth. 

The privateers of France held high carnival during 
the wars between England and that country, about the 
West Indies and the Spanish Main. A vessel might be 
captured, retaken, and captured again, perhaps several 
times in the course of a voyage. At the same time pirates 
ranged all up and down the coast, and clear across to 
the Madeiras. The hanging of a batch of these fellows 
at Boston was a common occurrence. 

As the eighteenth century drew on, the hardy men of 
Salem and their neighbors from Beverly and Marblehead 
sent out their smacks, their ketches, pinks, and schooners 
in ever-increasing numbers. The stout, bluff-bowed little 
ships, manned by sturdy Americans, from the tanned 


_ —————__—__# 
2 


Se 
. ee 
FE ee af. 


“VENOMOUS PIRATES OUT OF SALLEE AND MOGADOR.” 


THE MARINERS OF SALEM 107 


and pig-tailed veterans of Bank gales and West Indian 
northers, down to red-cheeked boys fresh from home, 
were the instruments of their livelihood, as well as that | 
of the shipwrights, riggers, and ship-chandlers of the 
little port. Many of these Salem sailor lads became great 
merchants, with world-wide interests, in later years, and 
their mansions are still to be seen in the old town. The 
charming houses, with their fan-lighted doorways and 
their graceful columns, are the inspiration of architects, 
for they are unsurpassed examples of oldtime American 
dwellings. 

When the Revolution brought the seafarers in to es- 
cape the King’s ships that hovered all along the coast 
to punish the “rebels,” they hastened to unload their 
molasses and logwood, their tobacco and cotton, and to 
stow aboard their vessels powder, chain-shot and hand 
grenades, pikes and cutlasses instead; to mount carron- 
ades, “long nines,” and swivel-guns, so that they might 
cruise for prizes, for the tame chickens of Salem had 
turned overnight into hawks, and they lost no time in 
swooping on their prey. Then came the flush times of 
Salem, for the privateering service hummed with activ- 
ity, and the old seaport was a very nest of armed vessels. 
All along the horizon, grim and watchful, cruised King 
George’s gun-tiered men-of-war, but the men of Salem 
knew every trickle of channel on the coast, and they had 
a dozen ways of slipping in and out, inside Baker’s and 
the Misery Islands, round by Marblehead or north inside 
of Thatcher’s, so they got clear by the dozen, to strike 
such terror into the hearts of the British merchants that 
it was afterwards said that the Revolution had been won 
by the privateersmen. However that may have been, 


108 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


it is very certain that the damage they accomplished was 
an important factor in the decision. The men of Salem 
alone took four hundred and forty-five prizes, of which 
nine out of ten were brought safely into port. 

So profitable was this service that a foremast hand 
might receive as much as a thousand dollars in prize 
money from one cruise, an enormous sum in those days. 
There are rich and prominent families in New England 
today whose fortunes are founded on Revolutionary 
privateering. 

The predatory character of this reckless trade, so 
closely akin to piracy, brought with it no small degree 
of demoralization. Washington complained bitterly, 
during the winter of Valley Forge, of the revelry and 
self-indulgence of the privateersmen in the seaports, 
while his suffering army lacked the most necessary cloth- 
ing and subsistence. The sober people of Salem and 
the shore villages were scandalized by the riotous antics 
of these tars during the short periods between cruises, 
when they made ducks and drakes of the money earned 
at the risk of their lives. 

With all its lure of rich and quick returns, privateer- 
ing was a most hazardous business. About one-third of 
the Salem vessels were captured by the enemy, who, ex- 
asperated at the destruction they wrought, placed their 
prisoners on filthy hulks such as the Jersey, in New York 
Harbor, where they died by scores of disease, or in 
British prisons, where they were treated as rebels and 
traitors. ] 

Of the vessels commissioned by the Continental Con- 
gress out of Salem there were of ships and schooners, 
fifty-six each; of brigs forty-five, with twenty-nine brig- 


THE MARINERS OF SALEM 109 


antines, fifteen sloops, and other small craft. There 
were besides these a number of small boats which took 
a hand in the business. The feverish activity, and the 
flood of money brought in at the period led to rapid 
progress in the size and speed of the ships engaged, so 
that the close of hostilities found Salem equipped with a 
number of fine large vessels. Her leading merchant, 
Elias Hasket Derby, spoken of as “King Derby” by Haw- 
thorne, had laid the foundation for the great oversea 
trade which she was destined to conquer in the fifty 
years following, and the hardy seamen trained in the 
privateers were ready to man her fleets. 

The Derbys of Salem have been styled the most no- 
table maritime family in our country’s annals. One of 
them was Richard Derby, who had been captain and 
owner of ships all through the period preceding the 
Revolution. He played a prominent part in the prelimi- 
nary troubles with the British troops in New England, 
and headed the Minutemen of Salem in their successful 
opposition to General Gage in the attempt to disarm the 
citizens of the district, which was one of the first overt 
acts of the Revolution. Afterward he became a member 
of the first Provincial Congress. His son John Derby, 
in his fast schooner the Quero, of sixty-two tons, took 
the first news of Lexington and Concord to England, and 
the same captain, eight years later, brought back the 
news of peace in his ship the Astrea. He was one of the 
owners of the ship Columbia, which first explored the 
great river of that name, thus establishing our claim 
to the mighty Northwest. 

The most famous member of the family, Elias Hasket 
Derby, was a brother of Captain John. ‘At the close 


110 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


of the Revolution he found himself the owner of several 
ships, large for that period, which had been built for 
privateering. One of them, the Grand Turk, of three 
hundred tons, was the largest vessel built in Salem up to 
that time. 

It is to this historic ship tnat our countrymen were 
indebted for the opening up of the East India trade. 
She, first of American vessels to show the flag at Cal- 
cutta, led the way to Bombay and the islands of the 
Indian Ocean. A picture of the time shows her under 
all sail up to royals, spreading the high topsails then in 
favor. She carries many staysails, and has a spritsail 
and sprit topsail under her bowsprit, while the flag of the 
“young republic, nearly as large as the spanker, waves 
proudly at her stern. Her bows show the complicated, 
cross-timbered ‘“‘quick-work” characteristic of the ships 
of the period—a survival from the beaks of antiquity. 
Thus depicted, she is an interesting link between the 
older ships we have been considering and the modern 
sail-craft with their severely practical lines. 

Mr. Derby became the greatest shipping merchant in 
America. His vessels traded to China, India, Arabia, 
Mauritius, and Siam. Their complete history would 
make one of the finest romances in the annals of Ameri- 
can commerce. Among the ship-owners of Salem, who 
did so much to advance the interests of our early foreign 
trade, his name stands first. 

Another splendid specimen of the oldtime merchants 
was Captain Nathaniel West, whose handsome portrait 
looks down on us from the wall of the Peabody Museum. 
He survived until 1851, a stately figure in the old town, 
dying at the age of ninety-six. He had been captured at 


THE MARINERS OF SALEM III 


nineteen and forced to serve on a British seventy-four- 
gun ship. Escaping, he took to privateering, which he 
pursued till the end of the war. One of his exploits was 
the taking of a prize in the harbor of Cork, Ireland, his 
lieutenant on this occasion being Nathaniel Silsbee, him- 


THE OLD-TIME MERCHANTS WATCHED THE OFFING FOR INCOMING 
SHIPS. 


self afterwards a large merchant shipowner in Salem. 
Captain West was one of the pioneers in the East India 
trade. One of his ships, the Minerva, was first of the 
Salem vessels to circumnavigate the globe, which she 
accomplished in 1800. 

The sea captains of the time were merchants as well 


112 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


as sailors. As there were no cables or wireless teleg- 
raphy, and very uncertain mails, so that they were out 
of communication with home for long periods, they had 
to be given a good deal of freedom in the management 
of their voyages. Very often their profits from a few 
successful ventures enabled them to set up as shipping 
merchants and owners. A story of the period well illus- 
trates the conditions under which old Salem built up her 
nautical prestige. 

Captain Carnes, crusing about Sumatra in 1793, got 
wind of a report that wild pepper, almost to be had for 
the asking, was plentiful along the northwest coast of 
the island. When he returned to Salem he got Jonathan 
Peele of that town to fit out a fast schooner, the Rajah. 
The pepper story was kept a secret from every curious 
soul in Salem, and after he sailed no person was able to 
get knowledge of his destination. Eighteen months later 
he was sighted in the offing, and when his pungent cargo 
was disposed of the profit from the voyage turned out 
to be seven times the amount of its total cost. Owner, 
captain, and crew managed to keep their information 
secret until the Rajah had made three successful voyages. 
Then the other Salem skippers, hot on his heels, had con- 
trived to pick up the scent, and for fifty years after the 
port of Salem was one of the main centers of the pepper 
trade in the whole world. 

A few years after the Revolution occurred a “slump” 
in shipping from which it revived slowly, but by 1792 
the China and Northwest coast trades were beginning 
to make their influence felt, and when the new century 
opened the Derby ships were spreading their sails to the 
breezes of every ocean. ‘To the Orient they carried 


THE MARINERS OF SALEM 113 


native produce and the merchandise of Europe. Home- 
ward bound they picked up cargoes from the European 
ports, the West Indies and the South, to be paid for by 
the goods brought back from the far East. The stout 
ship Astrea which had brought back the news of peace 
with England was the first vessel to show our flag in 
Manila, in 1796. 

Mr. Derby was succeeded in the hierarchy of Salem 
ship-owners by Joseph Peabody, who had played a man’s 
part in the hard school of privateering and battling with 
pirates in his younger days. He built and owned, during 
his admirable career, no less than eighty-three stout 
ships, with which he carried on trade with all parts of 
the world. His fine square-rigger, the George; when she 
sailed for India in 1815, had hardly a man aboard of her 
past twenty-one years of age. He lived till 1844, a man 
of noble character and public spirit. The George, of 
328 tons, 110 feet I0 inches long, became famous as 
“The Salem Frigate.”” In her forecastle were trained 
forty-five captains and twenty-six mates, to carry on the 
tradition of Salem seamanship. 

Joseph Peabody and his brother George, the great 
philanthropist; Junius Spencer Morgan, the latter’s part- 
ner and successor in his banking business—these stately 
old gentlemen seem rather remote nowadays, but their 
names may serve to remind us of the ocean origin of so 
much in our commercial foundations. The fact is too 
often neglected in our histories. 

The Crowninshield brothers of Salem, six of them, 
began the study of navigation when they were eleven 
years old. Excepting one of them, who died at sea, aged 
fourteen, they all commanded ships before they were 


114 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


twenty-one. They helped also to man the Ship of State 
in later years, two of them serving in Congress, of whom 
one was Secretary of the Navy. 

Nowadays a youth under twenty-one is either at 
school or college, or in some position of minor responsi- 
bility. But in the brave days of the Salem navigators 
we are constantly finding instances of extreme youth in 
situations which must have called for the utmost steadi- 
ness of judgment, joined to skill and daring in the difficult 
profession of seamanship. Thus we find Nathaniel Sils- 
bee in command of a fine new ship, the Benjamin, with 
Charles Derby as his chief mate, both lads of nineteen, 
bound out for India around the Cape of Good Hope. 
Silsbee and two of his brothers commanded ships on 
deep-water voyages before they were twenty years of 
age. Robert B. Forbes of Boston, a man justly honored 
in our maritime history, was mate of a ship at sixteen, 
at twenty held a command, and was at thirty-six head 
of the largest American mercantile house in China. 

What it meant in responsibility, in resourcefulness, 
and coolness in the most trying situations to command 
a ship in those days of war and piracy can never be too 
strongly emphasized, and the way these youths met the 
conditions of the time cannot fail to deeply impress us, 
as we peruse the journals and logbooks they have left, 
records of a line of most remarkable young men. The 
tales of De Foe, of Cooper, of Stevenson, of the many 
romancers of the sea, have nothing to surpass the actual 
experiences of these young Americans of Salem and 
their like from other ports, a century and more ago. Of 
this breed was Richard Cleveland, second mate at nine- 
teen of the Herald under Silsbee on an East India voy- 


THE MARINERS OF SALEM 11s 


age. Four years later he was in command of the barque 
Enterprise. When his ship was ordered home from 
Havre, he determined to stay abroad and engage in ven- 
tures on his own account, and thus began one of the 
most amazing Odysseys in all the records of the sea. 
He managed, on credit, to acquire a cutter of forty-three 
tons, no larger than many a modern pleasure craft for 
summer sailing, in which he undertook a voyage—to the 
Cape of Good Hope! The little ship was driven ashore 
but a short distance out of Havre, his port of departure. 
It took more than this, however, to discourage the 
dauntless young fellow, and he soon got his cutter 
patched up again and was off afresh on his long voyage. 
His motley crew, as he tells us, consisted of a Nantucket 
lad he had picked up in Havre, as chief mate, a German 
landlubber who feared to go aloft, a stupid Negro cook, 
an English lad of seventeen who was nearly blind and 
still feeble from the smallpox, and a little French boy 
of thirteen. With these people he navigated his tiny 
merchantman to the Cape, a four months’ passage. Here 
he sold the vessel and cargo at a profit, though he was 
regarded with suspicion, for the authorities there could 
hardly credit his account of his adventures, in view of 
the size of the vessel and the character of her crew. 
From the Cape Cleveland made his way to the Dutch 
East Indies, and thence to Canton, China. Here he got 
hold of a cutter smaller still than his former vessel, 
and undertook a voyage to the American northwest coast 
for furs. He had on board twenty-one persons, recruited 
from the scum of the Far East—“a list,’”’ says he, “of as 
accomplished villains as ever disgraced any country.” 
With a cargo worth somewhat less than $20,000—his 


116 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


entire resources—without charts or proper equipment, 
his nerve being his most valuable ballast, he started out 
in the teeth of the northwest monsoon. His crew, des- 
perate at the prospect before them, turned on him in open 
mutiny. He kept them under hatches, his two four- 
pounders loaded with grape trained forward, with a few 
loyal hands, armed to the teeth, to back him, until they 
were starved into surrender. He left six of them on the 
beach of Kemoy Island, some three hundred and fifty 
miles northeast of Canton, and sailed away on his 
voyage. 

It took him nearly two months of strain and hardship 
to reach the northwest coast. When he had nearly com- 
pleted his cargo of sea-otter skins, the vessel got 
aground, and he came within a hair’s breadth of losing 
her. Had the Indians with whom he had been trading 
discovered him in this predicament, he would have 
shared the fate of many a mariner on this coast, and he 
and his crew would have been massacred to a man. But 
his luck was still with him, and the cutter was gotten 
afloat again, repaired, and he sailed away for Canton. 
“The criminal who receives a pardon under the gallows,” 
he says, “could hardly feel a greater degree of exalta- 
tion.” His profit from the voyage amounted to forty 
thousand dollars. This was in the first year of the nine- 
teenth century, and Cleveland was twenty-five years old. 

He knocked about in the East for a time, making an 
unsuccessful voyage about the Indian Ocean in a twenty- 
five-ton pilot boat, and finally sailed for Copenhagen in 
a Danish ship, aboard of which he had loaded seven 
thousand bags of coffee. With the profits of this fra- 
grant venture he and a partner, Nathaniel Shaler, bought 


THE MARINERS OF SALEM 117 


a Virginia-built brig, the Lelia Byrd. With a young 
Polish nobleman named De Rousillon to make up a trio, 
they squared away for Rio, from whence they rounded 
the Horn to Valparaiso. As trade with that port in 
other than Spanish vessels was forbidden at that period, 
they promptly got into hot water with the authorities, to- 
gether with several other American skippers there in the 
harbor. But Cleveland’s nerve never failed him, and he 
not only managed to get clear, after a long and bitter 
quarrel, but he actually bluffed an apology from the 
Dons. His next undertaking took him to the coast of 
Mexico, where he got into another snarl with the gov- 
ernment of that province. Says Herbert Howe Ban- 
croft, in his History of California, “an amusing feature 
of this and other similar narratives is the cool frankness 
with which the Americans and English present the eva- 
sion of all Spanish commercial and revenue regulations 
as an action altogether praiseworthy.” Cleveland gives 
us an example of this when, shortly after leaving Mexico, 
he again found himself at loggerheads with the com- 
mandant at San Diego, on the California coast. Some 
of his men being seized on the beach, he sent in a boat 
and recovered them, at the same time capturing their 
guards. He then proceeded to sea, on his way out firing 
into the Spanish fort, which he silenced with his guns. 
After getting clear, he landed the crestfallen guard. 

That such exploits should add to the popularity of 
our countrymen on the west coast, in those far-off days, 
would be too much to expect, particularly as the Span- 
iards were undeniably within their rights in trying to 
enforce the port regulations. 

Cleveland then proceeded to the Sandwich Islands, 


118 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


where, incidentally, he landed the first horse ever seen 
by the natives, and from there he sailed to Canton and 
sold his cargo of furs. During his absence of seven and 
a half years from Salem he had amassed a fortune of 
seventy thousand dollars, and he returned a rich man 
by the standards of the time. 

The outbreak of the War of 1812 found the men of 
Salem running true to form. The disaffection among 
the maritime population due to Jefferson’s embargo did 
not prevent them from again plunging into privateering, 
though their part in it, relatively to New York and 
Baltimore, was less than during the Revolution. They 
had been obliged, during the long years of war in Eu- 
rope, to run the gauntlet of every conceivable danger 
and annoyance from the belligerents. It would have 
been impossible, even had the country been far stronger 
in a naval sense, to have escaped frequent clashes with 
one side or the other during the titanic struggle with 
Napoleon, and our countrymen had been driven far 
afield to seek markets for their trade, as far as possible 
outside the ranges of the strife in Europe. This had 
resulted in the development of a high degree of skill in 
the building of ships, fitted to run the hazards of a far- 
flung commerce. All along the coast the clamor of 
sledges and top-mauls, the clean pungent odor of pitch, 
of tar, and of fresh-sawn timber filled the shipyards as 
new vessels grew on the stocks under the hands of honest 
workmen, to be employed in trade, the benefits from 
which all might fairly expect to share. Humble people 
might venture their thrifty savings in the outbound 
vessels, with the certainty of faithful management and 
just accounting. 


THE MARINERS OF SALEM 119 


Under these stimulating influences the ship-owners of 
Salem, in common with the other Atlantic ports, found 
themselves provided with vessels that were stout and sea- 
worthy, to meet the hazards of the ocean, as well as 
fast and able, that they might choose or avoid conflict 
with their swarming enemies. 


A FAST AND Famous SALEM PRIVATEER OF I812—THE ‘‘ AMERICA ’’— 
UNDER FULL SAIL. THIS SHIP HELD THE RECORD OF HER TIME 
FOR SPEED. 


Thus when hostilities broke out with England these 
vessels, fitted out for privateering, lost no time in begin- 
ning their depredations on the enemy, and by the end 
of 1813 their many prizes had brought to the merchants 
of Salem more than six hundred thousand dollars. More 
than one of the fine old Salem mansions before alluded 
to were built from the profits of privateering in the 
War of 1812. The frigate Essex, which won immortal 


‘120 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


fame in her desperate losing battle with the Phoebe and 
Cherub in the harbor of Valparaiso, had been built in 
Salem in 1799, being paid for entirely by voluntary sub- 
scription. The fastest Yankee ship of her time was the 
Salem privateer America, which alone destroyed some 
two million dollars’ worth of British shipping during 
the war. A new Grand Turk; this time a brig of 309 
tons, manned by Salem men though owned in Boston, 
was also famous among the privateers. 

The peace with England and the downfall of Na- 
poleon cleared the war clouds from the lowering skies, 
and our Salem argonauts addressed themselves afresh 
to the pursuit of peaceful commerce. North and south, 
and far to the shadowy east, their burly little ships rolled 
on the deep-sea surges, bound in or out “ad ultimum 
sinum.” “Divitis Indiae usque ad ultimum sinum”’— 
“the spoil of the Indies to the furthest gulf’—this was 
the motto on the city seal of Salem. At this time they 
were specially engaged in the development of trade with 
the storied islands of the South Pacific. Half the tales 
and romances dealing with the South Sea Islands are 
founded on the adventures of the Salem mariners of this 
time, and they can never surpass in exotic interest the 
real stories, told by the men who lived them, still to be 
read in the time-stained annals of the old seaport. 

Now and then in the history of the world’s seafaring 
there has arisen a man whose contribution to the difficult 
problems of the navigator, whose insight into the mys- 
teries of the mighty waste of waters, has enabled him 
to render services whose value can never be adequately 
appraised, and which are of daily service to all who go 


THE MARINERS OF SALEM 121 


down to the sea in ships. Such were Prince Henry the 
Navigator and Columbus, Raleigh and Harrison, the 
inventor of the chronometer, and later on, Matthew 
Fontaine Maury. 

High on the list of such benefactors of all humanity 


SALEM SHIPS IN HARBOR, ABOUT 1800. 


should be placed the name of Nathaniel Bowditch of 
Salem. When we observe how slow and painful has 
been the progress of the science of navigation, how crude 
were the methods and how inadequate the equipment of 
the shipmaster, from the time of Columbus up to the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, we may measure 


122 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


the value of Bowditch’s contribution to the safety of 
ocean commerce. This modest self-taught scientist, who 
himself followed the sea for nine years in his early 
youth, was the author of a handbook of navigation 
whose priceless value in the correction of a multitude of 
previous errors, whose plain and practical arrangement, 
have kept it in daily use all over the world ever since 
Bowditch’s death, more than eighty years ago. It was 
said of it, “It has been pronounced by competent judges 
to be, in point of practical utility, second to no work of 
man ever published.” 

I have spoken of the activities of the Salem owners 
and builders in the period just previous to the War of 
1812. The outstanding fact in the history of this period, 
and it must be regarded as typical of the spirit of these 
men, is their enterprise in the face of discouragements 
and handicaps that would have appalled men of weaker 
fiber. During these troubled years occurred the Em- 
bargo of 1807, proclaimed as a measure of retaliation 
against England for her constant interference with our 
shipping. For two years our ports were sealed, our 
ships tied up to their wharves and our sailors idle. 
When the embargo was lifted in 1809, and our vessels 
rushed to Europe in search of trade they met with every 
sort of oppression and injustice at the hands of the 
warring nations, who were striving on both sides, to 
strangle the import and export commerce of their adver- 
saries. Yet in the teeth of all these difficulties the first 
decade of the nineteenth century is counted as the richest 
in the history of Salem shipping. 

During the twenty-five years following the war the 


THE MARINERS OF SALEM 123 


merchants of Salem continued their world-wide com- 
merce, though they never again reaped profits equaling 
those of the earlier days. Vessels drawing more than 
twelve feet could not reach the wharves; ships were 
getting larger, and rival ports with deeper harbors were 
claiming a greater share of the trade, so that from 1840 
onward the old seaport slowly relinquished its sea-borne 
interests to Boston and New York. Her merchants re- 
tained a patriotic affection for their native town, but 
transferred their counting-rooms to the larger cities. 
Notable among them was John Bertram, who had him- 
self been a foremast hand in his youth, and who came 
to be owner of some of the finest merchantmen that ever 
flew our flag. The Low family, eminent in New York 
shipping and public life, left Salem in 1825. The last 
important ships hailing from Salem were built by Sils- 
bee, Pickman, and Allen for the Manila trade—the 
Sooloo, Mindoro, and Panay. One day in the middle 
nineties a tug steamed up the channel between the Bos- 
ton waterfront and East Boston, towing a fine tall 
square-rigger. “There,” said an old seafaring by- 
stander, ‘“‘goes the last of the Salem ships—the Min- 
doro.” She was being hauled away to be cut down into 
a coal barge. 

The story of Salem is one of men, rather than of ships, 
for the merchant vessels they built and managed, while 
stout and able, did not differ from those sailing out of 
other American ports. I have dwelt on the human 
factor, since these men, trained in the little schoolhouses 
and the town meetings of New England, were the parent- 
stock of the mariners who played so great a part in our 


124 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


sea tradition, when they manned the finest sailing ships 
in the world during the middle years of the nineteenth 
century.” 


1Those who may desire to pursue the subject of Salem 
shipping at greater length than is here possible cannot do better 
than to read The Ships and Sailors of Old Salem, by Ralph D. 
Paine (Chicago, McClurg, 1912). Since the above chapter was 
written there has appeared a Maritime History of Massachusetts, 
by Professor Samuel Eliot Morison of Harvard, recently named 
Rhodes Professor at Oxford, in which the subject is admirably 
treated. (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1921.) 


CHAPTER VII 
THE TRADE-SHIPS OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 


| Se us take now a look at the American ship of a 
century ago, a period when our vessels had assumed 
a distinctive character, adapted to our special needs and 
representing their development on native lines. Of 
course, there were certain local differences of method 
among our ship-builders, but it may fairly be said that 
any mariner of experience, sighting one of our vessels 
at sea, would have recognized it as an American ship 
long before he got close enough to make out its details. 
The forty years of war and seafaring hazard had seen 
many changes in maritime technique, and the rigs and 
forms of sailing vessels had taken on an aspect which 
might be termed familiar and modern. The old high- 
stern construction had disappeared; the bow-timbering 
had been greatly simplified; the hull, while still broad 
and burly, as compared with the lean sharp clippers of 
later years, was longer in proportion to its beam, the 
greatest width being at a point about two-fifths of the 
length measured from the stem. There was little sheer, 
the line of the bulwarks being nearly straight from bow 
to stern. 

Looking at the hull of one of our ships as it grew on 
the stocks, we would have seen that her stem, before 


125 


126 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


the head-timbers of the prow were bolted on, resembled 
that of a modern rowboat of the round-bottom type, 
Tising nearly straight from the forefoot; passing aft, we 
would notice that the stern-post showed a decided out- 
ward rake, as distinguished from the nearly straight 
up-and-down profile of the eighteenth century. Viewed 
from dead astern, she showed an inverted semi-ellipse, 
the lower edge somewhat convex to the water-level; 
“pumpkins,” or projecting timbers at each end of the 
taffrail, served to sling a boat athwart-ships. The 
“ginger-bread” carving of earlier days had disappeared, 
with the quarter-galleries. A row of stern-windows 
looked directly aft. About all that survived of the 
ornamental work of former days was the decoration of 
the bows, which curved up under the bowsprit in a 
billet-head or spiral scroll, or else terminated in a figure- 
head, often quite handsomely designed and of consider- 
able artistic merit. 

Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century there 
was considerable latitude in the painting of ships. The 
hulls were sometimes buff, sometimes green for some 
distance above the water-line, or the upper works might 
be painted dark blue with gilt ornaments, as the fancy 
of the owner or captain might decide. At this time ap- 
peared the practice, attributed to Nelson, of painting 
a broad cream-colored or white band along the line of 
gun-ports, the lids of the ports being painted black. By 
1820 the custom of thus painting the port-streak had 
become almost universal, the rest of the hull being black. 
Many of our ships showed a band of white or yellow 
unbroken by gun-ports, but long after guns had disap- 
peared from merchant vessels, the painted ports were 


A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 127 


common, as a form of camouflage intended to overawe 
the natives in out-of-the-way, barbarous lands, by lead- 
ing them to suppose the ship to be armed. Even to our 
day the practice has here and there survived. 

The term “ship” had now come to mean a three- 
masted vessel, square-rigged on all her masts. The 
ship, the bark or barque, with a fore-and-aft rig on the 
mizzen, and the brig, with two square-rigged masts, were 
the types of vessel used for deep-sea voyages, with an 
occasional two-masted schooner carrying squaresails on 
the foremast above the fore-and-aft foresail—what is 
now called a topsail schooner, a rig obsolete with us. 
It was not till years afterward that the schooners with 
three or more masts, the barkentines and hermaphrodite 
brigs with square-rig only on the foremast, and the ships 
and barks with four and five masts made their appear- 
ance. The stout little vessels of a century ago, built, 
in the best types, on live-oak frames, seldom exceeded 
four hundred tons. The masts were set into heavy 
“steps’’ or sockets of timber bolted on the keelson, at 
the very bottom of the hold, and braced by frames called 
“partners” where they passed through the decks. At 
the heads of the lower masts—fore, main, and mizzen— 
were brackets known as trestle-trees, on which rested 
the semicircular platforms termed “the tops.” Above 
them towered topmasts, topgallantmasts and royalmasts, 
the entire affair thus having four sections, until in later 
years the skysail-poles were added. The bowsprit, 
braced by stout timbers known as “knightheads,’ where 
it came inboard, bore a longer spar, the jib-boom, at its 
outer end, and beyond this extended the flying jib-boom. 
The masts were supported by stays leading down for- 


128 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


ward; by shrouds, swifters, and backstays leading down 
and somewhat backward outside the hull to channels that 
they might have the spread necessary to take the strain, 
when the ship lay over in a living gale. All this stand- 
ing rigging, of stout hemp well tarred, gave the vessels 
of the period a heavy appearance aloft, quite different 
from the slender steel wire top-hamper of the present 
day. 

The lower yards were slung on trusses below the tops, 
and did not hoist or lower, as in the days of Drake. 
Above them were the topsail-yards, which lowered for 
furling to the masthead cap, and were hoisted to set the 
sail, then came the topgallant-yards, and highest of all, 
the royal-yards. Under the bowsprit a spritsail-yard was 
usual until well into the ’thirties—a survival from the 
days when ships did not carry jibs. 

Our ships, at this period, were distinguished by their 
short lower masts, and by the unusual height of the 
topsails as compared with foreign vessels. This feature 
appears in most of the old prints and paintings.* 

They carried, as a rule, three triangular sails forward 
—the inner and outer jibs, and the foretopmast-staysail. 
Between the masts were set the fore-and-aft staysails, and 
on the lower mizzen mast the spanker. In later times 
sails similar to the spanker in shape, known as spencers, 
were carried on the fore and main lower masts. The 
three lowermost squaresails, or “courses,” were more 
often called the foresail, mainsail, and crossjack. They 
carried besides, winged out on sliding booms from the 

1 Henry Hall, in a rather inadequate survey of American Ship- 
building made for the U. S. Census in 1880, remarks: “American 


vessels were distinguished by their short lower masts and the 
immense hoist of the topsail.” 


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A CRACK AMERICAN EAST INDIAMAN OF A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 


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A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 131 


ends of the yards, studdingsails for light weather. Our 
ships were everywhere recognized by sails of snowy 
cotton duck, set as flat as possible, of very different 
aspect from the baggy hemp canvas of other vessels. 
Very early in our maritime history American skippers 
became noted for their habit of driving their ships, and 
carrying sail to the limit of strain on the top-hamper.. 
Our vessels, as Dana tells us, were manned by smaller 
crews than similar European ships, but so superior was 
the quality of their seamanship that they far surpassed 
their rivals in the shortness of their voyages from port 
to port. This is borne out by a record of some of the 
Massachusetts-built Canton traders of the period we are 
dealing with. Manned by less than a score of men, their 
voyages were one-third shorter in time than those of the 
East India Company ships. On a tonnage of less than 
one-third of that of the British vessels, which had crews 
of 125 men, they carried half as much cargo. That the 
English should feel uneasy at the performance of these 
ships was natural. 

The most important ropes of the running rigging for 
setting and handling the sails were the halyards, for 
hoisting and lowering the yards and canvas; the braces, 
attached to the ends of the yards for swinging them, 
and the sheets for hauling out and trimming the sails. 
There were besides all kinds of minor gear—lifts, foot- 
ropes, gaskets, clew-lines, buntlines, reef-tackle, and so 
on, which make up the bewildering tangle, so puzzling to 
the novice, of the rigging of a ship, but which have no 
mysteries to the sailor, 

The sailing ship, thus bolted, braced, stayed, and 
rigged, was perhaps the most unique and interesting 


132 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


fabric ever contrived by man. How many generations 
—yes, ages—of trial and invention she represented, and 
how clearly the successive contributions of these gen- 
erations can be traced! In the re-study of the past, now 
so active, she well deserves to be taken into account, not 
only as a social agency, but for her influence on the 
whole course of mechanical development. 

A typical vessel, such as we have been considering, 
might carry two heavy bower-anchors, a somewhat 
smaller stream-anchor, and a still smaller kedge-anchor 
or two. As chain cables were not introduced till 
1812, and did not for some years come into gen- 
eral use, she would be provided with hemp cables 
for anchoring, which took up a great deal of room in 
the hold and were a constant source of anxiety on a 
rocky or coral bottom, owing to the danger of their 
chafing through. A heavy timber, known as the cat- 
head, projected out on each side of the bow for the 
purpose of attaching the tackle by which the anchor was 
hoisted, and which was hauled in by the windlass, to a 
“chantey” chorus which kept time to the rhythmic stamp 
of the sailors, as they strained to their task at the hand- 
spikes. 

Making sail on such a vessel, with a smart mate and 
a hearty crew, was an affair of system and discipline. 
When the ship was “hove short’ so that the cable 
stretched right up and down to the anchor, the crew 
swarmed aloft to cast the gaskets off the furled sails. 
This done, one man remained at the bunt, or center of 
each yard, ready to let go at the word. The rest 
scrambled down on deck to man the sheets and halyards. 
The mate hailed the yards “all ready?” and as the answer 


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DIAGRAM TO SHOW THE PRINCIPAL DETAILS OF SPARS AND RIGGING 


ON A LARGE SHIP’S MAINMAST, 1820-30. 


A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 135 


came “‘aye, aye, sir!” he gave the order “let go!” and in 
an instant the loosened canvas opened out from deck to 
masthead. The topsails were hoisted to another chorus 
and “sheeted home” by hauling out the lower corners. 
The yards were swung to trim the sails to the wind, 
the anchor brought up to the cat-head, and the ship was 
under way. 

The chantey songs, or “shanteys” in sailor language, 
were a feature of the old seafaring which is but a 
memory in these days of machinery. A good chantey 
man, it was said, was worth ten more hands in a watch. 
These hoarse choruses, full of the spirit of humming 
gales, and the rhythm of sweeping seas, had come down, 
in some cases, from our English forebears, but most 
of the songs in use on American ships probably began 
with the negro roustabouts in the Southern ports. The 
songs were of four kinds: the capstan chantey, sung to 
a march-time as the men stamped around the capstan; 
the halyard chantey, to a rhythm fitting the effort of 
heavy hauling, as in hoisting or lowering the yards; 
the bowline chantey, used on short pulls, for “boarding 
the foretack” or other jerky heaving movements; and 
the pump chantey, to the up-and-down strokes of the 
brake-pump. The “‘shantey man” or leader, led the song, 
the men alternating with him in the chorus. To the 
mate, these songs were a very important factor in the 
handling of his crew, for he judged their temper by the 
spirit with which they were sung. Just as our soldiers 
in the late war were encouraged in chorus singing, the 
oldtime sailors were urged to “strike a light!’—to start 
a song—by the mate, as a means of stirring up their 
morale. Hoarse, uncouth, and sometimes ribald, the old 


136 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


chanteys are yet full of the haunting spirit of the sea. 
I have not the space to quote largely from the chantey- 
songs, but a few stanzas may not be out of place: 


Away Rio 
(Capstan chantey) 


The ship she’s a-sailin’ out over the bar, 
Away, Rio! Away, Rio! 

The ship she’s a-sailin’ out over the bar, 
We're bound to the Rio Grande. 
Oh, away, Rio! Oh, away, Rio! 

Oh, fare you well, my bonny young gal 
We’re bound to the Rio Grande. 


HAuL AWAY THE BOWLINE 
(Bowline chantey) 


Haul on the bowline, the main and foretop bowline, 
"Way, haul away, haul away, Joe! 

Haul on the bowline, the packet-ship’s a rollin’, 
"Way, haul away, haul away, Joe! 

Haul all together, we’re sure to make her render, 
"Way, haul away, haul away, Joe! 

Haul, my bully boys, we'll either break or bend her, 
"Way, haul away, haul away, Joe! 


WHISKEY JOHNNIE 
(Halyard chantey) 


There up aloft the yard must go, 
Whiskey for my Johnnie! 

I thought I heard the old man say, 
Whiskey for my Johnnie! 

We’re bound away this very day, 
Whiskey! Johnme! 

[ll treat my men in a decent way, 
Oh, whiskey for my Johnnie! 


eee) M Ma\ ae * 
Lae Mn Uf 
M(t. ’ 


Ae 
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if 
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Na 
AY 

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“BOARDING THE FORE-TACK”’ TO A CHANTEY SONG. 


A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 139 


This last ditty was a great favorite, and runs on in- 
terminably. A few years ago the writer heard it, like 
a voice from the past, as a gang of riggers were bend- 
ing sails on a rusty old Scotch windjammer in the Erie 
Basin. 

A hundred years ago there were still a good many 
native-born American boys who went to sea before the 
mast, especially in the ships out of Salem and some 
other New England ports, and in the whaling vessels. 
Our vessels were strict in their discipline, and when the 
polyglot crews of later years came to man our vessels 
they were not always handled gently. 

Flogging was inflicted for insubordination, and lasted 
till well into the nineteenth century. There were, of 
course, arbitrary shipmasters and mates who sometimes 
abused their authority, but this has been a good deal 
exaggerated in our sea literature. Life on shipboard 
was necessarily rough and hazardous; obedience and 
willing performance of duty had to be exacted in the 
interest of all. 

At this time and for twenty years later the fastest 
vessels were of small tonnage. The Baltimore clippers 
that had been employed as privateers in our wars with 
England were modeled after the French luggers of the 
eighteenth century, and they could show their heels to 
anything else afloat. A number of them were after- 
wards engaged in the slave trade, sailing under various 
flags. They seldom exceeded two hundred tons, and 
were rigged as brigs, brigantines, or topsail schooners. 
They showed a very pronounced rake, or backward in- 
clination of the masts, thought to give lifting-power to 


140 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


the sails. From this class of vessels came the “long, 
low, rakish craft’ of piratical tradition. 

Those of my readers who may be interested in the 
daily routine of life at sea or an old-time sailing ship 
cannot do better than to read Dana’s Two Years Before 
the Mast, which describes it in great detail. It may 
be of interest, however, to describe a few of the common 
maneuvers in the handling of such a vessel. Of course, 
making or shortening sail was a matter of daily occur- 
rence, except in the trade-wind latitudes, when the ship 
might run for days without starting a brace or furling 
a sail. This was the perfection of sailing, the rounded 
trade-clouds seeming to hang in the sky for hours with- 
out moving, and the steady, dreamy trade-wind holding 
the swelling sails like sculptured marble. When the ship 
ran out of the trades, to approach Cape Horn or the Gulf 
Stream, however, a gale might strike her “butt-end first.” 
Then the topsails had to be close-reefed in a hurry, after 
the light sails had been furled. Across the upper halves 
of the sails, from edge to edge, they were reinforced 
by three or four stout reef-bands of canvas, through 
which were “grommets’—holes spaced evenly to take 
the reef-points, which were lengths of rope to be knotted 
around the sail. ‘At the ends of the reef-bands were 
rings set into the edges of the sail, called cringles, 
through which ropes were passed to haul them up to the 
yard. The smartest sailor took the weather earing— 
the upper corner of the sail on the windward side. The 
reef-cringle was hauled up to the yard and secured, and 
the men along the yard knotted the reef-points all along 
the upper edge of the sail, thus partially furling it. The 
sail, much reduced in area, was then hoisted again. 


A HUNDRED YEARS AGO I4t 


When it was desired to stop the ship’s headway, the 
sails were thrown “aback” by swinging the yards till the 
wind struck the sails on the forward side, thus forcing 
them back against the mast. This deadened the “way,” 
or progress of the ship through the water, so that she 
might lower a boat, for instance, if a man fell overboard, 
or to communicate with another vessel. Many of the 
old pictures of naval battles show the ships in this posi- 
tion. 


DIAGRAM OF TACKING SHIP. 


On every well-ordered ship the task of putting the 
vessel about to sail on a new tack was a matter of system, 
with a regular sequence of commands. At the word 
“ready about!’ all the men stood by at their assigned 
stations. The order “hard down” was given to the 
man at the wheel, followed by “helm’s a-lee,’ which 
was repeated back by the mate, standing on the fore- 
castle, and the jib-sheets and fore-sheet were loosed. 
“Raise tacks and sheets!’ came the next order, and the 
fore-tack, at the forward lower corner of the foresail 
was let go, then the tacks and sheets of the courses and 


142 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


staysails. The braces were hauled taut for a swing; 
“Maintopsail haul!” roars the mate, and the yards sweep 
round together to a rousing chorus. At the order “let 
go and haul!’ the after yards, then the head yards are 
swung, the thrashing canvas fills away to the wind, and 
the mate sees to the proper trimming of the sails on the 
new tack. All these movements called for judgment on 
the part of the mate, and their proper timing was re- 
garded as a test of his seamanship. 

The diagram on the previous page may serve to give an 
idea of the maneuver of tacking. The ship is shown 
“close-hauled’”’—that is, working toward the point from 
which the windis blowing. She is sailing within six points 
of the wind, the circle of the horizon, like that of the com- 
pass, being divided into thirty-two points. The slanting 
cross-lines indicate the angle of the yards to the wind. It 
will be seen, by examining the diagram, how the ship is 
propelled ahead, with the breeze coming from a point for- 
ward of a right angle with her course. 

A century ago there were no steam winches or similar 
devices for hoisting and hauling, and everything had to 
be done by main strength. This fact, together with the 
limitations of the hemp rope then used for supporting 
the spars aloft, kept the size of merchant ships from 
increasing much until, as improvements were introduced 
and new methods developed, it became possible to build 
and handle larger sailing vessels, like the famous clip- 
pers. A smart Liverpool packet out of Boston, in 1822, 
measured 359 tons. Her length was 110 feet, her beam 
27. New York packet-ships of the day ran from 300 
to 500 tons. Dana’s famous Alert, a “hide-drogher” 
of the best class, was 113 feet long, 398 tons. As 


A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 143 


many of our ships traded from port to port in the Far 
East and the South Sea Islands, they had to be of light 
draught to enter the harbors. People of our day, fa- 
miliar with mighty steamships of many thousand tons, 
often wonder how the little ships of long ago were able 
to weather the storms and seas off Cape Horn and in 
the North Atlantic. But they were buoyant and stoutly 
framed. The hatches were covered with tarred canvas, 
stretched tight by means of “battens” or strips of wood 
forced down around the edges. A triangle of sail in the 
tigging steadied the ship as she “‘lay to,” rising and fall- 
ing with the surges, instead of driving ahead as the 
steamships do. Very few of these little ships were ever 
lost in the open ocean, where they had room to drift, as 
a result of heavy weather alone. Rarely did the whale- 
ships exceed four hundred tons, yet they came and went 
on their long cruises, year after year, with seldom the 
loss of a vessel. The fact was that the men before the 
mast rather welcomed a stiff gale, short of a typhoon 
or hurricane, as at such times the ship was made snug 
under a rag of sail, and the watch on deck might take 
it easy, being relieved from the eternal work of splicing, 
painting, or fitting chafing gear as long as the rough 
weather lasted. 

The deck-background of the sailing ship continued 
to reflect the influence of antiquity. The forecastle in 
the peak, or triangular forepart of the hull, with the 
raised forward deck as its roof, was the traditional shel- 
ter of the crew. In the small ships of 1820-30, it was 
barely high enough for a man to stand upright under 
the massive carlins, or deck-beams; lighted dimly by a 
reeking whaleoil lamp, it was littered with sea chests 


144 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


and the scattered belongings of the sailors. A low stair 
or companionway, with a sliding door, looked aft to the 
main-deck amidships. Here, between the fore- and 
mainmasts, was the caboose, or cook’s galley, and aft of 
it the long-boat, securely lashed over the spare spars. 
Then came the main hatch with often a low house over 
it. Just abaft the mainmast steps led up to the quarter- 
deck, sacred to the ship’s officers, on which stood the 
cabin. The wheel* at the stern remained universal till 
steamships applied power to the steering gear. This 
arrangement of the deck, general in vessels of any size, 
is traceable all the way back to the sixteenth century. 

As to the speed of ships, at the period under consid- 
eration, it is not always easy to get dependable infor- 
mation. We may get some line on it from Dana’s ref- 
erence to his ship, the Alert. “When she was going, as 
she sometimes would,” he says, “eight or nine knots 
on a wind (10%, statute miles an hour) there would not 
be a dry spot forward of the gangway.” Later on, he 
terms eleven knots (12% miles) a prodigious rate of 
speed. Captain Clark states, speaking of the packet- 
ships, that none of them could average more than twelve 
knots for twenty-four hours. Standards of speed de- 
pend on the period considered, as we shall see when we 
come to deal with the California clippers. 

It may be fairly said that a distinct American sea- 
tradition, backed up by a people who knew ships and 
were universally interested in them, had taken shape by 
the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, and 
that the world-wide sweep of our seafaring enterprise 


1 There is warrant for placing the date at which this device began 
to replace the whip-staff at the beginning of the eighteenth century. 


A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 145 


in the next generation might be foreseen. The skilled 
and hardy seamen, the builders and owners of our ships, 
were ready and able for the broader undertakings that 
awaited them. 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE SEABOARD CITIES, 1820-1860 


Winks our seafaring forebears were pushing their 
ships to the uttermost oceans, the cities along the 
Atlantic and Gulf coasts came to take on an aspect in 
keeping with this, their principal business. As a back- 
ground for the far-flung traffic of their shipping, the 
theater of which was the globe, and the Seven Seas its 
stage, let us endeavor to sketch the ports and people who 
sent it forth. 

Each of the seaboard cities had its special character © 
traces of which linger in nooks and corners of the older 
towns. Here and there one comes upon reminders of the 
seafaring past: low warehouses of stone, moldering 
sheds that once were teeming hives of shipwrights, sail- 
makers or outfitters; rotting shipways and wharf- 
timbers, sodden with the recurrent tides, and thickly 
crusted with barnacles and mussels. Even in the great 
cities, Boston, New York or Philadelphia, Baltimore, — 
Charleston, or Savannah, many buildings yet survive 
about the water-fronts that saw the packets, the clippers, 
and the East Indiamen crowded three deep against the 
piers while the cobble-stoned streets echoed to the clat- 
tering drays and the clamorous traffic of the shipping. 

Scattered along the coast from Baltimore to Bath were 

146 


SEABOARD CITIES, 1820-1860 147 


the yards of the shipbuilders. Maine in the ’thirties be- 
gan to take a leading part in the industry. The last- 
named city has launched a mighty fleet of wooden sailing 
vessels in the course of its long shipbuilding history, and 
the fame of the Maine-built ships, so justly earned, is 
due in great degree to its workmen. As early as 1841 
the Rappahannock of 1113 tons, an enormous vessel 
for that period, was built by Clark and Sewall of Bath. 
The last of our large wooden square-riggers, the Aryan, 
came from its yards in 1892. The builders of Bath work 
nowadays in steel, and have by no means lost their 
skill. From Portland as well came and went in the old 
days many a fine ship on deep-sea voyages. It was from 
there that Longfellow drew his memories: 


I remember the black wharves and the ships, 
And the sea-tides tossing free; 

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips, 

And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
And the magic of the sea. 


But a little distance from Portland, to the southward 
lay the quaint old town of Portsmouth, on the Pisca- 
taqua River, down which timber from the forests near 
by was floated. That it was a center for ships and sea- 
men, with activities reaching all over the world, is hard 
to realize today in the drowsy, delightful old seaport. 
A feature here was the old Boyd estate, with its fine 
colonial residence, built in 1767, and surrounded by lawns 
and gardens down to the water’s edge. Here George 
Raynes established himself in 1835, and his shipyard, 
where he built many a fine vessel, formed a part of the 
picturesque place. Among the famous California clip- 


148 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


pers built at Portsmouth were the Morning Star and the 
Witch of the Wave, both launched in the ‘fifties. 

At Medford, at Newburyport, and south of Boston, 
at various points on the North River between Scituate 
and Marshfield there were famous shipyards. 

In the mid-century years the prince of American ship- 
builders, whose genius created the greatest wooden sail- 
ing ships ever built, or likely to be built, was Donald 
McKay of East Boston. When the flying California 
and Australian clippers appeared, McKay launched ship 
after ship, each one a masterpiece, culminating in the 
Great Republic of 4555 tons, largest extreme clipper ship 
ever built. He it was who built the Flying Cloud, holder 
of the record round the Horn to San Francisco, as well 
as the Lightning, the fastest ship that ever sailed the 
seas. Many admirable vessels were built by other con- 
structors about Boston. Indeed, that city remained a 
close rival to New York in shipping nearly up to the 
time of the Civil War, and the house-flags of her mer- 
chants were well known all over the world. They were 
specially active in the “‘nor’west trade,’ sending their 
ships to the Pacific Coast, usually in the neighborhood 
of the Columbia River, to trade with the Indians for 
sea-otter furs. These furs were in great demand at 
Canton, in China, whence the ships brought back teas 
and other Chinese goods, to be distributed all over the 
world. Another feature of Boston shipping was the 
hide trade, so admirably described by Dana in Two 
Years before the Mast. California, a part of Mexico 
till 1848, was a great source of hides for the shoe in- 
dustry, then, as now, an important Boston interest, and 
the vessels engaged in the trade hailed largely from that 


SEABOARD CITIES, 1820-1860 149 


port. Much of our knowledge of California in the days 
of the missions, before the discovery of gold, is due to 
the hide traders. The vessels of Dana’s time, mostly 
ships and brigs which seldom exceeded four hundred 
tons, were known as “hide-droghers.” Boston had also 
her Indiamen, her fruit ships to the Near East, her 
Liverpool packets, and an important trade with the Phil- 
ippines for hemp and raw sugar, long before anyone 
could foresee that our flag would ever wave over those 
islands. Her fine old merchant-shipping princes have 
left a tradition of stately manners, joined to an ample 
share of thrift and business shrewdness. 

All along India and Long Wharves, and later on 
Atlantic Avenue, the bowsprits of lofty square-riggers 
ranked in stretching line soared over the heads of the 
busy people below, their jib-booms almost thrusting their 
points through the windows of the counting houses op- 
posite. Vessels came frequently under sail right up the 
harbor, to back their topsails off the water-front and 
warp into their berths. A feature of the Boston wharves 
which still endures was the Bank fishing fleet, unloading 
their cod, haddock or mackerel in shining mountains of 
scaly wealth. Wherever ships could go, there went the 
argosies of Boston merchants, and interest in ships and 
the sea has remained, I think, more general among the 
people of the New England metropolis than in any other 
of our great Atlantic seaboard cities. 

We think of Newport in Rhode Island today as above 
all a center of wealthy social life, of summer sport for 
the favorites of fortune, but in former times it was a 
port of foreign trade, and especially it played a promi- 
nent part in the slave trade of unhappy memory. The 


150 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


Sound ports, New London and New Haven, sent their 
ships on foreign voyages as well, and they were active 
in the whale fishery. All the coast population of New 
England had its thoughts turned constantly to the sea 
as the one great field of gainful occupation. The people 
were ship-wise, and everywhere among them dwelt those 
who had voyaged to distant lands beyond the horizon. 
The prestige of the shipmaster placed him on a high 
social plane, his profession being in as high esteem as 
that of the merchant, the doctor, or the lawyer, for men 
of the best classes followed the sea in the old days in 
large numbers. As it was in Salem, so in the other 
New England seaports many of the great merchants had 
themselves sailed in or commanded ships at the outset 
of their careers. 

When the great seaport of New York began to assume 
the leadership, favored by its splendid harbor and backed 
up by the Erie Canal, it was already well-equipped for 
shipbuilding. The yards stretched along the East 
River south from Corlear’s Hook, opposite the Brooklyn 
Navy Yard. Directed by such men as Henry Eckford, 
Christian, Bergh, and William Webb—famous names in 
the history of American shipbuilding—they had launched 
many a stout vessel for the packet trade or for East 
India voyaging. Later came George Steers, designer of 
the yacht America, Jacob Westervelt, whose doorway 
on East Broadway represented the stern of a packet, 
and John Griffiths, who designed the first true clipper 
ship. These men belong to history, and their names 
should not be forgotten. Nor were great merchants 
wanting to further the task of placing New York at 
the head of the seaports of the Western Hemisphere. 


SEABOARD CITIES, 1820-1860 I51 


Men of broad vision and daring spirit, realizing that 
destiny had marked out the future of New York, as one 
of the great meeting-places of the earth, made it the 
center for their activities. The lifting topsails of their 
noble ships, faring “round the world and back again” 
appeared on every ocean, to bring back fairly earned 
profits to their owners and benefit to the nation. In 
the mid-century heyday of their enterprises the serried 
masting of many ships brooded over the narrow finger 
of lower Manhattan in a corded web of rigging. Over 
seven-tenths of our foreign commerce rode in American 
bottoms; the clefts of the side streets were cross-barred 
at every opening by the yards and top-hamper of vessels 
harboring from the Seven Seas, to unload the yield of 
the outports of Asia, Europe, and South America. All 
along the water-front the narrow pavements were choked 
with drays lurching over the rough cobblestones, beneath 
the slanting shadows of long ranks of reaching bow- 
sprits, from under which the sightless eyes of the figure- 
heads looked impassively down on the traffic. 

The old-time merchants of New York, in their swal- 
low-tailed coats of glossy broadcloth, their high chokers 
and ruffled shirts, live again on many a mellow canvas 
of the past century, guarded among the heirlooms of 
their great-grandchildren. Whatever their anxieties 
may have been, they seem in their portraits to dwell in 
an atmosphere of dignity, of grave deliberation, unlike 
the restless air of these uneasy times. It was their cus- 
tom to meet “on change” at the foot of Wall Street, 
where the arrivals of ships and the nature of their car- 
goes were announced. Their counting-rooms were along 
South and Front Streets, and they could look from the 


152 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


windows out at their ships, and almost down the main 
hatches of the unloading vessels. In the evenings they 
often gathered at the old Astor House, ship-builders, 
captains, and merchants joining in many a discussion 
about the merits of the different ships and the methods 
of managing them, to disperse at ten o’clock to their 
homes not far away. “In those days New York was 
one of the most beautiful and picturesque seaports of the 
world; the water-front was lined with majestic clippers, 
stately Indiamen, and noble packet ships, their American 
ensigns and well-known house-flags of many brilliant 
colors floating in the breeze. The view and sky-line of 
the port from the harbor were very beautiful; Battery 
Park with its fine lawns and trees in the foreground, 
the graceful spire of Trinity Church forming a promi- 
nent landmark, while clustered on every side were the 
modest yet dignified and substantial residences, gardens, 
and warehouses of the merchants, with a quiet, refined 
atmosphere of prosperity and contentment.” * 

Of course, Philadelphia, its Delaware River front 
providing a long stretch of sheltered wharfage, did not 
fail to play its part as an active seaport, whose vessels 
were justly esteemed for their fine construction. The 
first American iron ship was constructed at Wilmington 
in 1843, forerunner of the great fleet of iron and steel 
vessels since built in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, 
which have given to the Delaware the title of the ““Amer- 
ican Clyde.” That justly famous merchant, Stephen 
Girard, built four fine East Indiamen as early as 1791 
which were the pride of the city, and which brought him 


1The Clipper Ship Era. By Captain A. H. Clark. (New York, 
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911.) 


SEABOARD CITIES, 1820-1860 153 


large profits. Cope’s Philadelphia packet line, started 
in 1812, boasted some of the finest vessels in the Liver- 
pool trade. 

Baltimore had always been, and still is, a center of 
keen interest in the ocean-carrying trade. It was re- 
nowned in the early days for the speed of its vessels, 
from the time of the Baltimore clippers on through 
many years. Here was built the famous ship Ann 
McKim in 1832, the first large vessel modeled on the 
lines of the smaller craft which, up to that time, held 
the records for speed. "The Ann McKim proved a very 
fast ship, and no doubt had a strong influence on the 
origin of the famous Cape Horn clippers of later years, 
of which the Baltimore-built Architect was, fifteen years 
later, a notable example. In 1855 the Mary Wiutridge 
showed again the skill of the Baltimore builders with a 
record of 13 days 7 hours to Liverpool—a remarkable 
run for a sailing ship. 

To the southward there were but two Atlantic ports 
that played an important part in shipping. The seafar- 
ing population and the vessels plying in and out of 
Charleston and Savannah, being mostly of outside ori- 
gin, bore a very different relation to those communities, 
and formed less a part of them, than was the case in 
the Northern ports. As the cotton trade increased, the 
cities of the Atlantic and Gulf ports required a large 
fleet to handle it, and the vessels were mostly constructed 
by Northern builders. These Southern cities, especially 
Mobile and New Orleans, had a distinctive local color 
of their own. The floating river population was pic- 
turesque, but often a lawless element, to which was 
joined a mixed class of Creoles, West Indian, and Cen- 


154 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


tral American refugees, sometimes quiet and well- 
behaved and occasionally not. The negro roustabouts 
and stevedores supplied most of the water-front labor, 
with their native gayety and love of noise and song. 
The cotton ships were loaded by a process known as 
“steeving,’ the bales being compressed between decks 
by means of jackscrews, so that a ship might carry the 
largest possible amount of cargo. So tremendous was the 
pressure that in some instances the decks were forced 
up from the carlins, or cross-timbers, by the strain. Gal- 
veston, now a great cotton port, did not play any part 
in this trade to speak of till after the Civil War. In 
the late ‘fifties New Orleans ranked third in its foreign 
entries among the seaports of the United States. 

The proximity of the Spanish Main, besides the many 
easy hiding-places along the uninhabited shores of the 
Gulf, led to a good deal of trafficking with the pirates 
and slave-runners of those waters. In the half-drowned 
country to the south of New Orleans, there existed at 
Barataria a nest of outlaws headed by the notorious 
brothers Lafitte. These people built huts and storehouses 
in among the creeks and bayous, the approaches to which 
were known only to themselves. They even constructed 
fortifications armed with cannon, from which they defied 
the authorities. One of the Lafittes posed as a reputable 
merchant in New Orleans and dealt in the goods plun- 
dered from the vessels which fell victims to these free- 
booters. There is a tradition that when Jackson fought 
his historic battle at the close of the War of 1812, the 
center of his line was held by the Baratarians, who thus 
showed loyalty to a government whose authority they 
would not obey when it interfered with their piratical 


—— 


LOADING SHIPS AT A GULF PoRT, BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR. 


SEABOARD CITIES, 1820-1860 157 


misdeeds. Some years after the United States Navy, 
with the co-operation of the law-abiding people of the 
State of Louisiana, went in and destroyed the colony 
and scattered its members. 

When the discovery of gold started the rush to Cali- 
fornia, the city of San Francisco appeared almost over- 
night on the Yerba Buena hills, and it became, as it 
continues to be, one of our greatest and most picturesque 
seaports. During the colorful period from 1850 to the 
Civil War the Cape Horn voyages to the land of gold 
brought about a stirring phase of our sea history.) To 
the ships that made these driving voyages, with racks on 
the halyards and padlocks on the chain-sheets to keep 
any timid brethren aboard from interfering with the 
gear, were added the fine steamships of the Pacific Mail 
Line and a mighty fleet of foreign shipping. William H. 
Dana. had visited the bay in 1837 as a sailor on a Boston 
hide ship. He wrote in 1859, after describing his im- 
pressions of the harbor at that time: “when I saw all 
these things, and reflected on what I once was and saw 
here, and what now surrounded me, I could scarcely 
keep my hold on reality at all, or the genuineness of any- 
thing, and seemed to myself like one who had ‘moved 
in worlds not realized.’ ”’ Our fine Pacific ports of today 
are full of energy and daring in their sea ventures, but 
San Francisco, at the period referred to, was the only 
considerable seaport on the western coast. 

The expanding sea commerce of these years brought 
about rapid changes, both in the seaboard cities them- 
selves and in the character of the seafaring population. 
Americans of native birth became increasingly scarce 
in the crews before the mast, and the demand for sailors 


158 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


brought in. representatives of almost every race on earth. 
The best of these were the Scandinavians. These hardy 
sons of the Vikings have always been held in high esteem 
by those who know sailors, for no better mariners can 
be found afloat. There were also many fine British tars, 
who flocked into our ships in such numbers that their 
government became seriously concerned with the matter, 
finding it difficult to get men competent to handle their 
merchant vessels. Together with these came outcasts, 
beach-combers, jailbirds, and all the flotsam and jetsam 
of the outports. It is to be feared that these gentry were 
not always the objects of much tenderness on the part of 
ships’ officers, in the process of teaching them discipline 
and obedience. Jack is traditionally improvident, and 
the influx of these polyglot hordes, together with much 
laxness on the part of the authorities, brought about 
gross abuses by “crimps’ who furnished crews to the 
ships for a bonus, and who did not hesitate, after robbing 
many a poor fellow of his last copper, to drug or poison 
him with bad liquor and drag him aboard ship without 
a shirt to his back. It was far from uncommon for 
a man to recover consciousness from such treatment on 
an outbound vessel whose name or destination he did 
not know, or the name under which he had been entered 
on the ship’s articles. The men thus “shanghai’d” had 
to be provided with clothes, with boots, oilskins, and 
sou’westers by the skippers, restored to health and 
brought under discipline, often, it may be surmised, with 
the aid of a handspike or heaver in the hands of the 
mate. When they reached port inbound from a deep- 
sea voyage with several months’ pay under their lee, the 
runners from the sailors’ boarding-houses would be 


t 


i ave 
HE , 
WORK] 
HAVRE |>4 
Packet Line \ 
Bord & MHINCKEN aN 
gents 8 . 
FreightoPassage os 


BOARDING-HOUSE RUNNERS—"‘ ALMOST READY TO KISS THEM IN 
WELCOME.”’ 


aie 
Bm ts, ‘aa 


Giyay Ne vay) 


SEABOARD CITIES, 1820-1860 161 


awaiting them on the wharf, almost ready to kiss them 
in welcome that they might get the poor fellows into 
their clutches and rook them out of everything they had. 

While there were cases of brutality, no doubt, on 
some of our ships, the captains and mates were usually 
men of character and intelligence, and a willing and able 
seaman was sure of fair treatment by such men. They 
were often forced to be severe by the character of the 
people they had to handle, who were not infrequently 
impostors who knew nothing of the duties of a ship. 
A good deal of sympathy has been wasted on these fel- 
lows, as well as useless pity regarding the food supplied 
to them. The fact of the matter was that Jack preferred 
his salt beef and pork, his duff and lobscouse, when it 
was of good quality and sufficient quantity, as it usually 
was. It was simple fare, but a man could work better 
and grow stronger on such provender than on delicate 
food, though Jack, to be sure, has always claimed his 
privilege of grumbling. 

In the little towns along the coast all the boys learned 
to swim, to handle boats and fishing gear, almost as soon 
as they learned to read. They knew every stay or hal- 
yard on a pink or schooner, and went fishing on the 
Banks often at ten or twelve years of age. They cruised 
in their dories to the seaports near by to knock about 
among the shipping, to admire the lofty Indiamen, and 
to study the mysteries of their rigging; to delight their 
hearts with the figureheads, the shining brasswork, and 
the wonders of knotting and splicing. They saw bronzed 
seamen who had voyaged to the shadowy East, and 
listened spellbound to their yarns of India and the South 
Sea Islands. These were the lads who grew up to 


162 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


command our packets and clippers in their years of man- 
hood. The salt spray was in their blood and the call 
of the hoarse old ocean drew them to their chosen pro- 
fession. 

The sailor of the early nineteenth century was a fa- 


‘*LISTENED SPELLBOUND TO THEIR YARNS OF INDIA AND THE SOUTH- 
SEA ISLANDS.” 


mously handy man, deft at many trades. He made his 
shore-going costume himself in his watch below aboard 
ship—his bell-bottomed loose trousers of duck, his broad- 
collared shirt of flannel or checked cotton and his shiny 
tarpaulin hat, made of canvas or braided sennit and 
tarred, in the shape of a modern flat straw hat, with a 


SEABOARD CITIES, 1820-1860 163 


yard of fluttering ribbon round it. He rigged himself 
out to impress the people ashore, with a certain profes- 
sional pride. In 1833 Ralph Waldo Emerson pro- 
nounced him “the best dressed of mankind.” As times 
went on this nautical vanity pretty well disappeared, 
and he dressed like any other laborer. Those who knew 
the sea, however, could always tell the sailorman by 
the rolling swing of his walk, the hooked fists calloused 
by the handling of ropes, and the sheath-knife in his 
leather belt. The deep-sea sailorman could do marvelous 
things in the way of marlinspike work.. He could make 
rose-knots and Turk’s-heads, cross-pointing and coach- 
whipping, so that the incoming ships from China and 
India always looked their best after their long voyages, 
during which the men were kept busy getting them taut 
and trim to enter port. 

The influence of the shipping on the aspect of our 
twentieth-century ports has become confined to the 
water-fronts, and is largely hidden behind the sky- 
scrapers and lofty structures about the docks. The com- 
ing and going of great vessels, each of which has a dozen 
times the average capacity of the old sailships, is hardly 
noticed by the great mass of the people. The steamships 
are shorn of the lofty top-hamper of former days and 
are not apparent, except at the waterside. 

Of course, there will always be much of fascination 
for those who care to look for it, in the mighty steel 
vessels and the busy toil of the docks and shipyards. It 
is well to recall, however, that in the old days countless 
men arose in the morning to note the direction of the 
wind and the character of the weather, with its bearing 
on their sea-directed activities for the coming day. The 


164 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


homes of the merchants were within a stone’s throw 
of the water-fronts, and they lived in the very shadow 
of the shipping. News of the sea was all-important, and 
the papers featured it from day to day. 

All this has, of course, definitely passed from our 
modern cities with their endless diversity of interests. 
Yet it may help us in some degree to a clearer under- 
standing of the seafaring achievements of our fore- 
fathers if we note the intense specialization of the sea- 
board communities, which resulted, for a time, in giving 
our people the maritime leadership, both in the manage- 
ment and in the superior quality of their ships, over all 
their competitors. 


CHAPTER IX 
THE NORTH ATLANTIC PACKETS 


Wit the peace was signed in 1814, and the ques- 
tions at issue with Great Britain had been settled, 
our ocean-borne commerce found itself in a state of 
collapse. The Atlantic ports were full of dismantled 
shipping, which had lain idle during the war, and the 
seafaring population, now that privateering was ended, 
found itself without employment. But the downfall of 
Napoleon, and the prospect of peace in Europe encour- 
aged our merchants to turn with high hopes and the 
utmost energy to the extension of trade and the building 
of ships. It was imperative from the start that a regular 
and dependable system of communication with Europe 
should be established. In colonial times and just after, 
the securing of cargo space and the transportation of 
passengers was a haphazard business, one that could 
rarely be planned ahead with much confidence. Some 
of the large Southern planters maintained vessels of their 
own, which made leisurely voyages back and forth with 
tobacco and a few local products, on which passage 
might be secured, if circumstances permitted. Other 
trading vessels might take passengers if such were of- 
fered, but they made no special bid for that class of 
business. It was merely an incidental. But the need 
165 


~ 166 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


had arisen for a special service equipped for the packet 
trade. The term “packet” was applied to a vessel run- 
ning regularly between certain ports with passengers, 
cargo, and the mails, as distinguished from vessels that 
might be chartered for any voyage, or those employed 
in trading from port to port, wherever business might 
offer, for the account of their owners. 

The first regular New York-Liverpool service, pioneer 
of the great steam transatlantic trade of today, was the 
Black Ball line, which started in 1816 with four stout 
little ships of about 400 tons, the Amity, Courier, Pa- 
cific, and James Monroe. ‘These were the ancestors, as 
one may say, of the mighty vessels, registering up to and 
beyond 30,000 tons, that we know today, and for nearly 
forty years, as long as the North Atlantic packet trade 
was conducted in sail ships, it remained in the hands 
of Americans. 

Perhaps some of my readers may have seen copies of 
the old newspapers of the early nineteenth century, with 
their rows of announcements, each with a quaint little 
woodcut of a ship under sail in the corner, of the sail- 
ings of the packet ships. The people of the seaboard 
cities were very proud of their packet lines, and the 
greatest interest was taken in the competitions and the 
records of the ships, which had a highly sporting char- 
acter. ‘They averaged in the early days of these lines, 
23 days to England, and 40 home again, the fastest pas- 
sages being about 16 days, sailing eastward. The ship’s 
long-boat was lashed amidships, and carried a regular 
menagerie, sheep, pigs, geese and chickens, with a little 
house on the main hatch, in which was a cow or two, 
for milk, for in those days there were no canned pro- 


rans 


Ni 
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ONS 
ni aah 
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OLD-TIME PACKET-sHIPS MEETING AT SEA. (A “Brack BALL” Anp a “DRAMATIC” LINER.) 


NORTH ATLANTIC. PACKETS 169 


visions, and no cold-storage holds for fresh meat. Some- 
times in heavy weather the whole family was carried 
overboard by the seas, a sad misfortune for the passen- 
gers as well as the live stock. The cabins aft were lighted 
in the evening with candles and whale-oil lamps, and 
though no doubt they would seem very dismal to the 
pampered travelers of today, they were thought luxuri- 
ous at that simple period. 

New packet lines soon followed the Black Ball, to 
London and Havre as well as Liverpool, the Red Star, 
Swallowtail, and Dramatic Lines, Enoch Train’s from 
Boston, and Cope’s and Girard’s lines out of Philadel- 
phia. When the Erie Canal was opened in 1825, there 
was a veritable boom in the New York shipping trade. 
Larger ships began to appear, though for a long time 
they did not exceed 700 tons. 

During this entire generation our ships ruled the 
“Western Ocean’ as the sailors call the North Atlantic. 
It is said that in spite of the vast increase in tonnage 
nowadays the ocean is by no means so “populous” as in 
former times. There were then many small ships, which 
were apt to remain longer in company when they met. 
They would hail and speak one another, instead of 
rushing past with their signal numbers flying as at pres- 
ent, and when several vessels sailed at about the same 
time they might sight one another repeatedly on the way 
across as they tacked and shortened or set more sail. 

The Black Ball vessels all bore a large painted black 
ball on their foretopsails, just below the close-reef band. 
The Dramatic Line packets were named after famous 
actors or dramatists, and showed a diagonal cross reach- 
ing nearly from corner to corner on the foretopsail. 


170 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


The famous Dreadnought had an upright red cross, to 
distinguish the Red Cross Line. The skippers of these 
ships, as well as the vessels themselves, were well-known 
to the whole public, and were splendid seamen and men 
of character. The packets were manned by a special 
type of men, known as the roughest and toughest class 
of sailors afloat. They were called “packet rats,” and 
were mostly shipped in Liverpool, never going on long 
voyages. It was the first mate’s business to handle these 
desperados, and he had no easy task. Many a time they 
had to be beaten into submission with a heaver or a 
marlinspike, and the ship’s officers always went armed. 
American-born sailors were rare among these crews, 
most of whom were of the class then known as “Liver- 
pool Irishmen.” 

These fellows were not, like the long-voyage sailor- 
men, expert in “marlinspike seamanship’—in knotting 
and splicing, and similar skilled work, their duties being 
limited to the handling of ropes and sails at sea, and 
they needed to be agile and smart in these duties, for 
the packets were driven night and day, winter and sum- 
mer, across the Western Ocean, and they made or left 
their ports whatever the weather might be without loss 
of time for fog or storm, for ice or snow. Like most 
ships of their day, they were painted black with a white 
port-streak, and were kept taut and trim, the necessary 
“tuning up’ being done in New York by riggers and 
shipwrights, instead of at sea by the crew as in other 
ships. 

In the early forties larger packets were built, up to 
and over 1000 tons register. There was constant racing 
between them, and great rivalry among the crack ships. 


NORTH ATLANTIC PACKETS 171 


The outward trip to England was made at this period 
by four different ships in fifteen days, which was equal, 
or superior to the steamships of the day. 

The first steam vessels to enter the North Atlantic 
trade were British owned, and the Sirius in 1838 is 
usually regarded as the first ship to demonstrate the 
practicability of steam in the regular service, crossing 


aay 


iil mane! 
at Nan ie 
Ni uke 


AN EARLY STEAMSHIP. 


in 18 days from London. The sail-ship skippers re- 
garded the early steamships with contempt and dislike, 
and usually made it a point to run past them as close 
as possible, to show their superior speed. Of course, the 
steamships of that day all carried as much sail as the 
sailing vessels, as indeed they continued to do for many 
years. They were all paddle-boats, and it was not until 
1853 that iron screw propelled vessels appeared. The 


172 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


Great Western, launched in 1838, made passages of a 
a little more than 12 days, and her example is said to 
have furnished the inspiration for the Cunard Line, 
started in 1840 between Liverpool and Boston. 

The best known of the packet commanders was Captain 
Samuel Samuels of the Dreadnought. He has left a most 
entertaining record of his sea life in the volume entitled 
From the Forecastle to the Cabin. The Dreadnought may 
be regarded as the culmination of the sailing packet type. 
She was built at Newburyport especially for Captain 
Samuels by a syndicate of New York merchants—E. D. 
Morgan, Francis B. Cutting, David Ogden, and others, 
who conducted the Red Cross Line. She measured 1413 
tons and was 210 feet long. She sailed on her first voy- 
age to Liverpool on December 15, 1853, and during the 
ten following years, under Captain Samuels’ command, 
she made a most remarkable record, in 1859 making the 
fastest passage ever accomplished by a sailing packet 
ship—13 days 8 hours, corrected time. She made many 
other fast runs, her best westward trip being 19 days. 
On account of the prevailing winds in the North Atlan- 
tic, due to the influence of the earth’s revolution, the 
best sailing records are all on the eastward run. 

Captain Samuels writes: “On our first voyage outward 
bound, we crossed Sandy Hook bar with the then crack 
packet ship Washington, Captain Page. We landed in 
Liverpool, and took on a cargo and two hundred immi- 
grants, and met her off the northwest lightship bound in 
as we were running out. On our way home we crossed 
the bar the day after the steamer Canada sailed for Bos- 
ton, and when the news of her arrival reached New 
York, we were reported off the Highlands.” 


NORTH ATLANTIC PACKETS 173 


Speaking of the crews, he tells us: “The Liverpool 
packet sailors were not easily demoralized. They were 
the toughest class of men in all respects. They could 
stand the worst weather, food, and usage, and put up 
with less sleep, more rum, and harder knocks than any 
other sailors. They would not sail in any other 
trade. They had not the slightest idea of morality or 
honesty, and gratitude was not in them. The dread 
of the belaying pin and heaver kept them in subjection.” 

These fellows would not use a knife on one another, 
but woe to any other unfortunate sailor who was on a 
packet ship for the first time. They would plunder him 
and stab him if he protested. On one occasion Captain 
Samuels, who had a practice of making these black- 
guards strip and disgorge their plunder on entering port, 
was outwitted by them for a time, but undertook a little 
detective work, and discovered a couple of them fishing 
stolen clothing out of a cask from which they drew their 
drinking water. In 1859 he shipped a crew of them who 
belonged to a desperate gang called the “Bloody Forties.” 
He had an officer search the forecastle and deprive them 
of their weapons. A day or two later they mutinied and 
refused to perform duty unless one of their number who 
had been put in irons for insolence to the captain should 
be set free. For several days the ship was handled by 
the officers and boys, but finally with the aid of some 
of the immigrant passengers the mutineers were beaten 
and starved into subjection. 

Referring to his vessel, Captain Samuels says: “She 
was never passed in anything over a four-knot breeze. 
She was what might be termed a semi-clipper, and pos- 
sessed the merit of being able to stand driving as long 


174 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


as her sails and spars would stand. By the sailors she 
was nicknamed the ‘Wild Boat of the Atlantic,’ while 
others called her the ‘Flying Dutchman.’ Twice she 
carried the latest news to Europe, slipping in between 
the steamers. The Collins, Cunard, and Inman Lines 
were the only ones at that time. There are merchants 
still (in 1887) doing business in New York who shipped 
goods by us which we guaranteed to deliver within a 
certain time or forfeit freight charges. For this guar- 
antee we commanded freight rates midway between 
those of the steamers and those of the sailing packets.” * 

The brave old Dreadnought was wrecked in 1869 
while on a Cape Horn voyage. Her crew were rescued 
after being fourteen days adrift in the boats. 

The sailing packets played a most important part in 
the development of the United States, for it was in 
these ships that the great rush of immigration, from 
Ireland and from Germany after 1848, found its trans- 
portation. These poor people were crowded into the 
steerage, and were required to provide and cook their 
own food. As the duration of the trip, especially in 
winter, was a very uncertain matter they sometimes suf- 
fered great hardships. In heavy weather the hatches 
were battened down, and the people were often pros- 
trated with seasickness and unable to cook, so that deaths 
from actual starvation are said to have occurred. The 
descendants of these immigrants are many of them 
prosperous and prominent citizens today, senators, gOv- 
ernors, merchants, or manufacturers, and among the best 
of Americans. 


1From The Forecastle to the Cabin. By Captain S. Samuels. 
(New York, Harper and Brothers, 1887.) 


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NORTH ATLANTIC PACKETS 177 


If I have told at some length of the darker side of 
sailing travel in the old days, it is by way of emphasizing 
the contrast with the comfort, even luxury which prog- 
ress has brought about in sea voyaging. But we may 
be sure that traveling on “the noble American vessels 
which have made their packet service the finest in the 
world” (as Dickens wrote in 1842) had its interest and 
pleasure in many features that must have been especially 
delightful. There is a charm to sailing that applies to 
no other kind of movement. The rhythmic swing of 
the vessel, the sense of being in the hands of elemental 
forces, the straining sails and humming cordage, the 
mystery and power of the sea—these things appeal to the 
dormant seafaring instinct in our blood. An ocean voy- 
age in the old days was an adventure. It was the sort 
of navigation that Drake and Columbus had known. 
The people of any American community, except in a 
few seaport towns, who had crossed the ocean were few 
in number, and the business of making such a journey 
was a much more complicated matter than in the present 
day. It was necessary to engage passage a long time 
ahead, on the crack ships sometimes a year in advance. 
The time required for the voyage might be greatly length- 
ened by adverse winds or stormy weather. 

Quite often the captain acted as passenger agent as 
well as skipper, and travelers were invited to make their 
arrangements with him. The ship might be boarded at 
the wharf, or in the stream, or even outside the harbor, 
off Sandy Hook. There was at that time a class of boat- 
men who conducted a sort of marine taxicab business— 
Whitehall boatmen they were called—from Whitehall 
Landing at the Battery. Frequently, late passengers 


178 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


would be rowed out to the ship from that point, as she 
made sail in the stream. There were few tugboats, and 
the ships always worked out under sail unless the wind 
was dead ahead. Any landsman would have taken a 
breathless interest in the business of getting the ship 
under way—the thrashing of loosened canvas and the 
stamping and shouting as the topsails were sheeted home 
and the yards mastheaded—all these activities, of a sort 
we shall never see again, would fill any normal youngster 
with delight and admiration. Perhaps a little later on 
when the old packet began to lift her forefoot to the 
long gray rollers, and to bury her bluff bows in the 
sweeping seas, with the spray flying over the knight- 
heads, he would begin to get a little dizzy, and to feel 
like paying his penalty to old Father Neptune, but that 
was a passing drawback, and he would soon get his 
sea-legs. In the cabin gentlemen in high collars and 
“stocks” gathered ceremoniously with ladies in vast 
hoop-skirts by the light of the oil lamps, swinging in 
gymbals to the rolling of the ship, under the low carlins 
of the ceiling. The cooks and stewards were Negroes, 
as in the American hotels of that day. The table for 
meals ran lengthwise of the cabin, and was fitted with 
“fiddles” or frames to keep the dishes from sliding off 
in rough weather. Overhead was a rack for extra 
dishes, glasses, cruets, and so forth. The staterooms 
opened off the cabin very much as they do on the older 
steamboats still in service on the rivers. In very rough 
weather no passengers were allowed on deck, and one 
could only read, sleep or play cards, or listen to the cease- 
less creaking and groaning of the timbers, so different 


NORTH ‘ATLANTIC PACKETS 179 


on a sailing craft from the chattering and trembling vi- 
brations of a great steel steamer. 

A white light was carried at the bowsprit-cap at night 
as port and starboard lanterns had not then come into 
use. A flare was kept ready in the waist at all times, 
to warn passing vessels or signal for the pilot. The In- 
ternational flag-signal code, the wireless telegraph, the 
steam siren, and all such modern devices were undreamed 
of by the old-time sailormen. The Liverpool pilot gen- 


‘‘A FLARE WAS ALWAYS CARRIED IN THE WAIST,” 


erally came aboard off Point Lynas at the entrance to 
the Mersey River, but on westward trips the American 
pilots ran far out to sea. The New York pilot of the 
old days was quite a public character, and always wore 
a tall hat when he boarded an inbound vessel. 

When the British companies, with the strong assist- 
ance of their government, started the first transatlantic 
steam lines, it was in the face of much doubt. An emi- 
nent British scientist in 1835 pronounced the possibility 


180 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


of steam transatlantic navigation as chimerical as that 
of making a voyage to the moon. Three years later the 
Sirius made her first trip, though she exhausted her 
coal outside Sandy Hook, and had to burn resin and 
Spare spars to get up the harbor. She excited as much 
comment as did the dirigible airship R. 34 when she 
arrived here in 1919. Said a New York newspaper of 
the time: “What may be the ultimate fate of this ex- 
citement—whether or not the expenses of equipment and 
fuel will admit of the employment of these vessels in 
the ordinary packet service—we cannot pretend to form 
an opinion; but of the entire feasibility of the passage 
of the Atlantic by steam, as far as regards safety, com- 
fort, and dispatch, even in the roughest and most bois- 
terous weather, the most skeptical must now cease to 
doubt.” 

Various attempts were made to run steam vessels by the 
American shipping lines, all of which were unprofitable, 
during the ten years following. It would seem as if the 
very skill and efficiency they had acquired in the opera- 
tion of sailing ships encouraged doubt and _ hostility 
against steamers. Lower New York at the time was 
placarded with posters headed “Sail vs. Steam” and 
vaunting the superiority of the former. Meanwhile the 
Cunard Line was established in 1840 with a British mail 
contract for $425,000 a year, between Liverpool and 
Boston, touching at Halifax. To meet this challenge, 
the Collins Company, which had conducted the Dramatic 
Line of sail packets, built four fine American steamships 
—the Aquitanias of their period—which met with un- 
deserved misfortune and failure, one being sunk in col- 
lision, with a loss of two hundred and twenty-two lives, 


NORTH ATLANTIC PACKETS 18I 


while another was never heard from after leaving Liver- 
pool for New York. Soon afterward the line was dis- 
continued. 

The sailing ships continued to carry passengers across 
the Atlantic up to and for some years after the Civil 
War, but had to give up the losing game in the end. 


A PACKET-SHIP OF THE ’FIFTIES TOWING INTO THE MERSEY. 


The last sailing vessel regularly employed in the trans- 
atlantic passenger trade known to the writer was a little 
barque called the Sarah, which ran between Boston and 
the Azores till the early ‘nineties. 

All the American vessels in the ocean passenger trade, 
both steam and sail, were built of wood up to 1860, and 
followed in rig and model, the traditional lines of the sail 


182 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


craft, slowly developed from ancient times down through 
the ages. The details of the masts and yards, the meth- 
ods of securing the standing rigging, the form of the 
bows, all show a family resemblance with the ship-types 
of ancient and medieval times. Once the simple prin- 
ciples of directing a vessel under the impulse of the 
wind had been worked out, they remained unchangeable, 
though each generation added its improvements in gear 
and hull construction. Yet we can confidently affirm 
that a ship’s crew of, say, the time of Columbus would 
have soon been able to handle such a ship as the Dread- 
nought, had it been possible to place them aboard of 
her. Any boy who learns to sail a boat, in his summer 
sport on the lakes or harbors, acquires more or less 
knowledge of these elementary principles, and would 
soon be able to grasp their application on the largest 
square-rigger afloat. 

The North Atlantic packet service was a splendid 
school of hardy seamanship, in which were bred many 
of the men who commanded our peerless clippers dur- 
ing the years of their glory. It was a fine phase of our 
maritime history, in which the daring and resource of 
the American sailor and merchant found worthy expres- 
sion. 


CHAPTER X 
THE WHALEMEN OF NEW ENGLAND 


HE pursuit of the whale can be traced back for 
many centuries. Hakluyt tells us that as far back 
as A.D. 890 the hide of the whale was used for cables. 
The English sought the Greenland whale all through the 
sixteenth century, and the Dutch were especially active 
in the industry at the time of the Plymouth settlement. 
When the coast pioneers gathered along the New 
England shores, seeking for every resource that might 
offer itself, in their hard struggle for existence, they 
did not fail to profit by the occasional whales that came 
astrand, as still happens now and then. From the fat 
of these animals they extracted oil and spermaceti for 
their lamps and candles, to light them in the long winter 
evenings, when icy gales were raging and the breakers 
thundered along the coast. 

Sighting the whales that spouted offshore, they nat- 
urally cast about them for means of using this resource, 
and they began to put out in their little smacks and boats 
to capture them. They would tow the carcasses in to 
the beach, build fires, and boil out the oil from the 
blubber. 

Of course, this led them farther and farther out to 
sea as the game grew scarce and wary, so they built 

183 


184 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


larger vessels with better equipment, and organized in 
a simple way for a better division of labor in the various 
operations. Before long it was found that the whale 
products might be utilized as a commodity of trade. 
Ships were loaded for England with the oil, and the 
traffic centered in several of the smaller ports about the 
southern shores of New England—New Bedford, New 
London, Sag Harbor, and other towns, and above all, 
on the little island of Nantucket, twenty-eight miles off 
the coast in the open ocean. So began this grandiose 
hunt for the mighty game of the deep sea, destined in 
later years to cover the Pacific from Cape Horn to the 
Arctic and clear across to the waters of Japan. 

These early whaling sloops were broad-bottomed, 
sturdy little vessels, carrying square topsails which were 
trimmed by braces leading forward to cleats on the bow- 
sprit. They were manned by thirteen men: two six-man 
crews for the boats, and a cook who was the ship-keeper 
when the boats were off. The greasy, reeking blubber 
was stowed into casks after being stripped off by a spiral 
cut around the carcass of the whale, which was turned 
over as it floated alongside by means of a block at the 
masthead. No doubt it was a most offensive cargo in 
hot weather, when some days might elapse before it 
could be gotten ashore. 

The extending range of the industry soon led them to 
the Bay of St. Lawrence and even to Greenland. They 
coasted along the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas and 
worked well out into the North Atlantic. These longer 
voyages made it necessary to construct “try-works’ 
aboard their boats to boil out the oil, instead of bringing 
the blubber ashore for that operation, and the industry 


WHALEMEN OF NEW ENGLAND 185 


took on a character that changed little, in its methods, 
as long as whaling remained active. 

The Revolutionary period checked the whaling indus- 
try for a time, and pathetic tales of distress and starva- 
tion have come down to us, of cold and misery in the 
little communities. But no time was lost, once peace was 


AN EARLY WHALING SLOOP. 


declared, in getting the business under way again. One 
of the Nantucket whaleships, the Bedford, claims the 
honor of having been the first vessel to show our flag 
in English waters after the war. 

By this time the whalemen had found their way to the 
Pacific, which was destined to be the scene of their 
greatest activity. Their imbroglios with the Spaniards 


186 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


had the same serio-comic character as those of the Salem 
skippers, referred to in a previous chapter. They would 
cruise up and down the west coast of South America, 
the Andes just lifting on the horizon, get a partial cargo 
of sperm oil, then bear away around Cape Horn, filling 
up with right whale oil on the coast of Brazil. Such a 
voyage might last two years. 

The War of 1812 brought another period of bitter 
distress, but the strife once over, the industry entered 
upon its palmy days, lasting till petroleum and coal-gas 
replaced whale oil as a lighting medium. A few vessels 
still cruise in pursuit of the whale for the bone, and there 
is a certain demand for the oil for soap-making. As 
some kinds of whale- and fish-oil will not congeal in 
freezing weather, they are also useful in the lubrication 
of delicate instruments. As a great industry, however, 
whaling has ceased to exist. Some idea of its magnitude 
about 1840 is given by figures which placed it third in 
rank among Massachusetts industries. New Bedford 
was for a time the fifth port in shipping of the United 
States. Profits in some cases reached I00 per cent on 
a single two- to four-year voyage. There is a record of 
one voyage during the Civil War which netted 363 per 
cent. But the burly little ships, so stout of build and 
quaint of model, have nearly all disappeared. Their 
durability was astonishing. Three of them have records, 
respectively, of 79, 90, and 97 years of service. ‘As 
late as 1920 a barque built in 1841 was fitting out at 
New Bedford for a voyage. Only a few years ago a 
number of them might still be seen about New Bedford 
harbor, squatting, sea-worn, and picturesque, against the 
wharves. 


WHALEMEN OF NEW ENGLAND 187 


The species of whales sought were mostly of three 
kinds. There was the deep-sea sperm whale, often 
combative, but valuable for his superior oil and above 
all, for the waxy substance called spermaceti, taken from 
the head and used largely for candles. Then there was 
the right whale, so-called, which yielded the cheaper 
“train-oil.”’ From it was also taken the whalebone, 
which forms a sieve or strainer in the mouth for the 
minute marine creatures on which it lives, its throat or 
gullet being of surprising smallness. In the Arctic 
waters was found the bowhead, ‘or Greenland right 
whale, also giving oil and bone. 

The summer visitors who flock in our day to the little 
island of Nantucket find interest in the old houses in 
the town, with their roof-platforms, from which it was 
usual in the whaling days to watch for the inbound ships. 
The island is rich in the lore of its far-flung ocean enter- 
prises of a century ago, when it was a hive of industry 
with its rope-walks, sail-lofts, and warehouses, and its 
ships crowded the little harbor. The cooper and the 
blacksmith, the sailmakers, and kindred artisans all de- 
pended for their livelihood on the success of the whale- 
ships, and put their best efforts into their tasks, The 
boys of those days flocked about the wharves, practising 
the use of the harpoon on floating logs, learning to swim 
and manage boats, and growing strong and active against 
the day when their turn would come to go whaling. 
Their great ambition was to become “boat-steerers” and 
to wear the “chock-pin” thrust through the upper button- 
hole, which was the distinctive badge of the man who 
had taken his whale. 

As time went on, the larger vessels found the harbor 


188 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


of Nantucket too shallow, and New Bedford took the 
lead as a whaling port. There, too, may be seen many 
a fascinating heirloom, in the shape of ship-models and 
objects carved from whalebone by the sailors in their 
leisure hours on the whaling-grounds. 

The voyages of the whale ships averaged about three 
years. Three long years of ceaseless rolling up and 
down the ocean wastes, covering the vast expanse of the 
Pacific, rarely entering a port or getting a word from 
home! The vessels were ships, barques and sometimes 
brigs, not often more than four hundred tons, of special 
and distinctive appearance, unlike any other craft. 
Stout, heavy, and bluff in the bows, they carried every- 
thing necessary, as far as foresight could provide, for 
cruising in latitudes when havens were few and far 
apart, and where a ship could not be sure of finding 
materials for refitting, so that she had to carry them 
herself, and depend on her crew for her ability to keep 
the sea. There was no difficulty in identifying a 
“spouter” off soundings. The whale-boats, usually five 
in number, were slung on cranes or davits of wood along 
the rail. A high housing at the stern served for the 
storage of whaling gear. ‘At the mainmast-head were 
slung two heavy blocks, or pulleys, for the tackle used 
in stripping the blubber from the whale. Aloft on the 
main royalmast was the crow’s-nest, sometimes a barrel, 
sometimes merely a ring-support, from which the look- 
out scanned the surface of the sea to the horizon, watch- 
ing for the steamy spouting of the whale against the 
wrinkled background of the waters. Day affer day, as 
the old blubber hunter rolled under easy sail on the long 
Pacific swell, the masthead man studied the ocean from 


WHALEMEN OF NEW ENGLAND 189 


his lofty viewpoint, to hail the deck when whales were 
sighted. 

“There she blows, blows—ah, blows! four points off 
the lee bow and sperm whale!” would rouse the men be- 
low, to start a scramble for the boats, for there was 
keen rivalry between the crews to be the first in “going 


A “SPOUTER’? ON THE WHALING GROUNDS. 


on” as the term was—making fast to the ponderous prey 
with the harpoon. j 

The whale-boat, twenty-eight feet long and of beauti- 
ful model, light but strongly built, carried five oarsmen, 
pulling oars of different lengths, so arranged as to keep 
the balance when the harpooner, or bow-oarsman, stood 
up to hurl his iron. The sixth man—the boat-steerer— 
guided his course with a twenty-foot oar working 


190 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


through a grommet or loop on the stern-post. The har- 
poon had a pivoted toggle-point which turned at right 
angles to the thirty-inch shaft after penetrating the 
whale. This shaft was set on a six-foot pole of oak or 
hickory. To the shaft was attached a line, so fastened 
with seizings along the pole that it could be released if 
necessary. The whalers became perhaps the most skilful 
small-boatmen the world has ever seen. Let us follow 
their movements as they approach the monster, running 
up under their spritsail if the wind serves, if not, driving 
the boat along like the trained oarsmen they are. As 
the whale is a red-blooded mammal, not a fish, he must 
rise to the surface from time to time to fill his lungs 
with air, which gives them their opportunity. As they 
swing to the stroke, they watch the boat-steerer, who 
directs the course so that they may come in from behind 
on the whale. As they close up on him the odor of the 
whale, like rank seaweed, reaches them, and the har- 
pooner stands up at the word. The boat shoots over the 
broad tail-fluke and ranges up alongside. “Now! Give 
it to him!” roars the boat-steerer, and the iron is flung. 
“Starn all, hard! Slack line and starn!” The boat gives 
a backward spring as the men strain at their oars to 
shoot clear of the convulsive start of the creature. Now 
the bow-oarsman grasps the harpoon-line, faces forward 
on his thwart, and brings the strain well back from the 
bow, so that the boat rides alongside and parallel to the 
running whale. At the first favorable moment, the line 
is hauled in to bring the boat close up behind the lateral 
fin, from which position a ten-foot lance, with a sharp 
oval head, can be thrust into his vitals. As the boatmen 
hasten to pull clear of his dying struggles, he begins to 


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A “NANTUCKET SLEIGH-RIDE’’—IN TOW OF A RUNNING WHALE. 


194 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


While the men in the boats were battling with a whale, 
those remaining aboard maneuvered the ship as near 
as possible to the scene of action, awaiting the “flurry.” 
As soon as the whale floated “fin out” on his side, the 
carcass was secured alongside the vessel by means of a 
chain around it near the tail, so that it lay with the 
head toward the stern, and the arduous work of cut- 
ting-in commenced. This was begun by making a hole 
in the gristly tissue near the eye, to afford a purchase 
for the immense hook, which swung from the tackle rove 
through the blocks at the masthead. As the men on deck 
swayed away on the fall, the blubber began to unwind 
somewhat as does a spiral puttee, assisted by men with 
sharp, long-handled spades to under-cut the strip, or 
“blanket.” As the carcass turned the long band of oily 
fat, from eighteen inches to four or five feet thick, slowly 
rose to three-quarters the height of the lower mast. At 
the word “board blanket-piece” the strip was cut across 
and swung inboard, a fresh grip for the next hoist being 
previously taken below the cut. The blubber was low- 
ered into the hold as fast as it came in, while an expe- 
rienced man, standing on a stage slung over the side, 
cut off the immense head, one-third the length of the 
whale. From this was bailed out the pure spermaceti, 
found in a liquid form in the central part, known as the 
“case.” This was the most valuable part of the oil, 
often amounting to more than twenty barrels. 

Meanwhile the try-works were started, the fire being 
kindled under the kettles with scraps left from the cut- 
ting-in of a previous whale. These pots were set in a 
brick structure constructed on deck amidships. In them 
the blubber, cut up in slices, was tried out, and the oil 


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WHALEMEN OF NEW ENGLAND 107 


was then stowed in barrels. The whale-ships carried a 
supply of these, knocked down into staves, which were 
assembled by the ship’s cooper. The task of cutting-in 
was continued till all the blubber was disposed of, often 
lasting clear through the night, the smoky glare of the 
try-works lighting up the sails and rigging, and making 
a lurid picture on the lonely ocean. 

The right or bone whale is a very different creature 
from the sperm whale. The latter frequents the deep 
sea, its food being the squid or octopus, found on the 
bottom, which it cuts up with its sharp-toothed lower 
jaw, so dangerous to the whalemen. The right whale, 
a sluggish creature, feeds by straining the water through 
the immense sieve of whalebone which lines its mouth, 
as it plows along, swallowing the mollusks and minute 
organisms which compose its food down the narrow 
orifice of its throat. It was usually attacked about the 
head, which would have been very dangerous with the 
sperm whale, as well as useless, for the harpoon would 
not pierce its tough surface. The right whale oil was 
inferior in quality, and it yielded no spermaceti. The 
oil taken from the sperm whale in summer contained 
much more of this material than that of winter, and as 
the waxy substance was hardened by the cold, and the 
clear oil could be separated, this winter oil was in demand 
for out-door lamps, since it would not thicken in frosty 
weather. 

In all the whaling ports, living as they did on this 
one industry, the whale and his product, the fathers and 
brothers who sailed in his pursuit, and the ships and their 
voyages were the exclusive topics of interest. These 
towns came thus to have a special local color and char- 


198 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


acter, traces of which still remain. The crews of the 
whale-ships usually numbered between thirty and forty 
men, several times the number carried by trading ships 
of the same tonnage. This provided four or five six- 
men crews for the boats, besides coopers, cooks, and 
ship-keepers. The proportion of native Americans was 
larger than on the cargo ships, but there were also 
“Western Islanders’ from the Azores, Indians, and 
Kanakas picked up about the Pacific Islands. Honolulu 
was a great rendezvous for the whalemen, who played 
no small part in preparing the islands for their future 
Americanization. 

In the old days the Nantucketers always spoke of the 
Pacific whaling grounds as “the other side of the land.” 
It is to be feared that some of the old-time skippers 
“hung their consciences on Cape Horn” on the voyage 
out, for some sad tales have come down of their deal- 
ings with the natives of the islands, and of their clashes 
with the Spaniards in the ports of call along the west 
coast of South America. One of these resorts was Payta 
in Peru, where they would put in for supplies, and where 
they frequently got into very hot water indeed with the 
Peruvians. Off this coast lay the Galapagos Islands, 
which were uninhabited by man, but which abounded in 
immense crawfish, turtles, iguanas, seals, and other 
aquatic animals. Here they would go for water, and to 
feast on the great turtles, which were considered a tooth- 
some delicacy after a monotonous diet of salt beef and 
ship’s biscuit. Then they would square away for the 
offshore grounds, between the Galapagos and the Hawai- 
ian Islands, often extending their voyages to Japanese 
waters. 


WHALEMEN OF NEW ENGLAND 199 


In later years they cruised to the Arctic Seas in 
greater numbers until the time of the Civil War, at the 
close of which the Confederate cruiser Shenandoah 
made sad havoc among them, burning twenty-six of the 
vessels within a few weeks. 

The old whale-ships, being built strictly for their 
practical fitness for a special task, showed little of the 
smartness affected by the packets and clippers of their 
day. There were, of course, a few crack vessels, as the 
fancy of an owner here and there might permit him to 
indulge in such luxuries, but as a rule the vessels re- 
flected the homely simplicity of their Yankee builders. 
Their masts stood straight up and down; speed being 
useless in their business, they were wall-sided, bluff, and 
square on the stern-transom. They came as near being 
indestructible, with their heavy scantling and sturdy top- 
hamper, as any work of human hands can be, and it 
was rare indeed for one of them to suffer greatly from 
gales or to require extensive repairs to the hull. The 
whale-oil, working into every nook and cranny of the 
frame, acted as a preservative against decay. 

Lasting as a number of them have right up to our 
times, they afford a special interest for the ship student, 
who finds in them examples of constructive methods 
peculiar to the older ship-builders and long since obso- 
lete in more modern craft, such as the almost vertical 
stern-posts; the bow-timbering identical with that of the 
ship of the forties; and the moldings and hand-wrought 
details that hark back to colonial days and earlier. Thus 
they play a distinctive part in the genealogy of the 
American merchant marine. 

Coming home from a three- or four-year voyage, with 


200 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


their patched sails blackened by the smoke of the try- 
works and their paint rusty and seaworn, they looked 
as they were, the rough tools of livelihood handled by 
rugged and practical men. Yet nobody who loves a ship 
and feels the character she takes on from years of 
buffeting the oceans, could fail to be impressed by the 
quaint old “spouters” as they laid along the New Bed- 
ford wharves but a few years since—picturesque sur- 
vivals of a bygone time, tough and honest as the men 
who manned them. 


} 


CHAPTER XI 
THE LORDLY CLIPPER SHIPS 


& the middle of the nineteenth century approached, 

the United States came to possess as fine a seafar- 
ing population as the world has ever seen. Men bred for 
generations to daring and resource in the different mari- 
time ventures of the nation, tanned by the suns and 
hardened in the gales of all the oceans, backed by able 
and far-seeing merchants, with a wide and well-informed 
public interest behind them, stood ready to seize the new 
opportunities that were offering. The decks were 
cleared; the hardy sailors were ready, trained to the 
minute; and destiny was about to open to them the most 
inspiring epoch that has thus far occurred in the history 
of our seaborne commerce. 

When, in 1832, the ship Ann McKim was built at 
Baltimore, the first large vessel based on the lines of the 
small and speedy Baltimore clippers and their successors 
appeared on the sea. She at once became famous among 
seafaring men for her speed and beauty, and other build- 
ers, inspired by her example, set about to rival her suc- 
cess. Capacity to carry cargo, joined to the influence 
of a conservative spirit which has always been common 
among those connected with the sea, had hitherto ruled 
in the design of ships. It was not till this period that 


201 


202 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


the proponents of newer methods had been able to get 
a real chance to apply certain ideas that had been de- 
veloping among them, in the light of their recent studies. 
Just as it happened with the steamboat, and later on, 
with the aeroplane, men in many different places were 
striving in new directions to a common end, and it was 
apparent that the dawn of a new epoch in ship-construc- 
tion was at hand. Guesswork and rule-of-thumb were 
being superseded by scientific efficiency. In the same 
way, too, as it has happened with so many other inven- 
tions, it was to happen that one man was to strike the 
note with a ship-type that should embody the new ideas 
that were becoming current, and that should identify 
his name, above all others of his time, with the special 
innovations that marked the change. 

This man was John W. Griffeths, a young ship- 
designer in the employ of Smith & Dimon of New York. 
It was felt that in spite of the success of the Aun 
McKim, of 493 tons, the Baltimore clipper model was 
not well adapted to larger vessels, approaching one thou- 
sand tons register. Pondering on this problem, Griffeths 
imagined a design in which the stem was drawn forward 
into a long sharp entrance, with concave or hollow lines; 
the widest beam was brought further aft; the quarters 
were raised, to relieve the hull from the drag of the 
stern in its progress through the water. He exhibited 
a model embodying these ideas, which were then thought 
quite revolutionary. In spite of much discussion and 
resulting opposition, a firm of shipping merchants, How- 
land & Aspinwall, influenced somewhat, no doubt, by 
their experience with the Ann McKim, which they 
owned for a time, undertook to build a ship on the plans 


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THE CORDLY. CLIPPER SHIPS 205 


proposed by Griffeths. Thus was born the famous 
Rainbow, first of the true or extreme clipper ships, 
launched in 1845. 

The term “clipper” had become familiar through its 
application to the small Baltimore craft mentioned, pre- 
vious to 1820. These vessels were not especially sharp 
forward, resembling their French progenitors on that 
respect, as well as in their rounded cross-section, indic- 
ative of stability and power to carry sail. They were 
followed by a class of two-masted vessels known 
as “Aberdeen clippers,” employed in the British coasting 
trade, and built at Aberdeen, Scotland. Somewhat later 
on there appeared a number of small, fast vessels used 
in the lucrative opium trade between China and the 
East Indies, of which some were owned in England and 
some in the United States. They were mostly schooner- 
rigged, and were known as “opium clippers.” The 
Rainbow, of 750 tons, however, was the first typical 
full-rigged clipper ship. 

She was the center of a storm of criticism during her 
construction, but she made a remarkably fast and suc- 
cessful voyage on her second trip out and back from 
Canton, China, bringing home herself the first news of 
her arrival out. Her captain, John Land, claimed that 
she was then the fastest ship in the world, and the truth 
of his claim was generally recognized. She was im- 
mediately followed by the celebrated Sea Witch of 890 
tons, a ship which has to her credit a series of the fastest 
records in our marine annals. 

The wonderful achievements of these vessels, and the 
splendid ships which followed them in swift succession, 
form a stirring chronicle. Their deeds were in great 


206 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


degree due to the men who commanded them, for the 
stern old ocean has never seen their superiors in nerve, 
skill, and energy. These consummate sailors carried 
royals and studdingsails when many a foreigner was 
wallowing about with two reefs in his topsails; they 
drove along day and night, round the Horn to San 
Francisco and across to China, with rackings on the 
topsail halliards and locks on the chainsheets, so that 
weak-kneed or frightened seamen might not tamper with 
the gear; they made voyages that have never been 
equaled under sail for speed and daring, before or since, 
reducing by one-half or more the time required for pas- 
sages to China, to Australia, or to California, so that 
for a decade they skimmed the cream of the ocean 
freights of the world. 

Of these great sea captains there was none more popu- 
lar than was Captain Bob or “Bully” Waterman. Born 
in New York, he went to sea at the age of twelve. At 
twenty-five he commanded a ship and made five voyages 
round the world. His exploits in the former New 
Orleans packet ship Natchez, which he had once brought 
home from Canton in 78 days, were the talk of the city, 
and when the Sea Witch was launched, his fine reputa- 
tion gave him the command of that beautiful clipper. 
During the three years following, he made a series of 
fast voyages to China and back, around the Cape of 
Good Hope. One of these passages took him to Canton 
in 104 days. Another brought him flying home in 77 
days, from the same port. It is only in very recent years 
that steamships have been able to exceed these records. 
Waterman commanded some of the finest vessels out 
of New York, and during eighteen years never called 


FHE LORDLY CLIPPER SHIPS 207 


on the insurance underwriters for a dollar of loss or 
damage. 

Another noted clipper captain was Josiah Creesy, 
born in that home of many sailors, Marblehead in Mas- 
sachusetts. Like the rest of his web-footed generation, 
he grew up in boats along the shore and breathed the 
air of spacious voyaging, coming to command the fa- 
mous Flying Cloud when she made her passage to San 
Francisco in the record time of 89 days, which has never 
been beaten, and probably never will be, by any sailing 
ship. The names of these men, and others like them— 
Palmer, Dumaresq, Lauchlan McKay, and their col- 
leagues—stand high on the honor roll of American sea- 
manship. 

Among the ships built at this period, just before the 
shining lure of California gold was to bring out a stately 
fleet of flying skysail clippers, none was more justly 
renowned than the Oriental; first to land a tea cargo 
from China in England, after the British Navigation 
Laws had been amended, throwing that trade open to 
American ships. She reached London, 97 days out from 
Hong Kong, with 1600 tons of tea in December, 1850, 
and aroused a furore of interest with her spreading 
yards and raking masts, her mahogany deck-fittings and 
gleaming brasses. The British Admiralty requested per- 
mission to take off her lines in dry-dock, as an example 
to their shipbuilders. 

By this time the rush to California was in full swing. 
Every sort of craft—whale ships, packets, brigs, and 
schooners, anything that would sail—was being freighted 
with men and goods, bound for the gold mines. Cargo 
space rose to $60 per ton of forty cubic feet, amounting 


208 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


in some cases to more than the value of the vessels when 
ready for sea. 3 

Under the stimulus of this feverish activity there came 
into being a fleet of long-armed square-riggers that sur- 
passed anything that had ever been seen on the seas, and 
which will probably never again be equaled by sailing 
ships. They swept around the Horn to California in 
a swift and triumphant succession. ‘Thence, squaring 
away for China, they loaded teas for London, or for 
our Atlantic ports, in Canton. After swinging clear 
around the globe by the Cape of Good Hope, they in 
many instances paid for themselves and yielded large 
profits within a year from their launching. This period, 
from 1850 to 1860, saw the climax of our shipping in- 
dustry, as prepared by the hardy and tenacious men who 
for two hundred years had been showing their mettle 
on the oceans of all the world. The competition of 
steam was hardly felt as yet. For a time the British 
tea trade was almost entirely in the hands of Ameri- 
cans, whose ships commanded nearly double the freight 
rates of their competitors. The exploits of these vessels 
were eagerly followed by the public, whose sporting in- 
terest in them surpassed even that of later years in the 
races for the America’s cup. The San Francisco voyage, 
coming under our coasting-trade laws, was of course not 
open to foreign vessels sailing from the ports of the 
Eastern seaboard, but rivalry was keen between our 
ships and under its stimulus their records aroused the 
greatest interest everywhere. 

Of the first nondescript fleet that started for Cali- 
fornia at the news of the gold discoveries, few ever left 
the harbor of San Francisco, for their crews and officers 


THE LORDLY -CLIPPER SHIPS 209 


deserted them to rush to the mines. The examples of 
the first clippers had furnished new light to owners and 
builders on the matter of speed. The yards were well 
prepared to meet the new situation, so that no time was 
lost in the launching of the California fleet. Starting 
with the Celestial, they followed in quick succession, 
thirteen by the end of 1850, every one of which made a 
splendid record. When, in the course of that year, seven 
ships contested for the speediest run, the excitement was 
general, and the betting fast and furious. The Sea 
Witch, in the capable hands of Captain Waterman, car- 
ried off the prize in a passage of 97 days, being driven 
around Cape Horn in the height of the Southern winter. 
All of the ships made creditable runs, averaging 112%4 
days, about seven weeks under what had previously been 
considered a fine passage—160 days. ‘The largest of 
them was less than 1100 tons register. 

With the opening of the year 1851 the new vessels 
coming off the ways showed a rapid increase in tonnage. 
Here were ships of a type never seen before, sharp, and 
powerful, with top-hamper that would have startled the 
conservative mariner of earlier days. The use of steel 
for spars and rigging had not yet been developed, and 
the skill and judgment of builders and riggers were 
tested to the utmost to give the necessary strength aloft. 
The spreading wings, borne on wooden spars sustained 
by Russian hemp standing-rigging, carried a terrific 
strain as the lofty clipper drove through the seas. This 
year saw the launching of the Flying Cloud, of the 
Northern Light, the Comet and the Witch of the Wave, 
the Swordfish and the Ino. ‘These six ships all made 
speed records that will probably not again be ever equaled 


210 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


under sail. The first-named clipper, holder of the San 
Francisco blue ribbon, will never be forgotten by the 
American sailor. Of 1783 tons, 225 feet long, she car- 
ried three “standing” skysail-yards above her royals, 
yards which were not hoisted aloft when the sails were 
set as had been the earlier practice, but remained in place. 
When she returned from her record voyage, the wooden 
wedges, or “fids’” that had secured her topmasts were 
exhibited in the Astor House, all broomed and splintered 
—an impressive evidence of the hard driving she had 
been through. 

Of the thirty-one California clippers launched in this 
year, the largest was the Challenge, of 2006 tons, with 
a ninety-foot mainyard. Her skipper was “Bob” Water- 
man. His crew on her first voyage proved as desperate 
a set of ruffians as ever disgraced a ship’s forecastle. 
Only two of them were Americans, and but six out of 
sixty-four in the crew were competent to handle the 
wheel. Disease, due to their filthy habits, broke out 
among them, at one time laying up seventeen, of whom 
five died at sea. Early in the voyage, the mate was at- 
tacked by four of them at once, and Waterman going 
to his assistance with an iron belaying pin after they 
had inflicted twelve knife-wounds on him, wielded it so 
vigorously as to cause the death of two. Three others 
were killed by falling from aloft off Cape Horn. In 
spite of his tragic voyage, Waterman brought his ship 
into San Francisco in 108 days—a remarkable example 
of nerve and resolution. 

It was at this time that the Flying Cloud made her 
triumphant passage, the result of which is recorded in 
her log as follows: “Aug. 30th. Sent up foretop-gallant- 


Mp pry, 
/ MMO ty, 


List 


CLIPPERS RACING THROUGH THE TRADES, 


ee 9 
A Wey 

m | i + 
t * x 


THE CORBY CLIPPER CSAIBS 213 


mast. Night strong and squally. Six a.m. made South 
Farallones bearing northeast 4% east; took a pilot at 
7; anchored in San Francisco harbor at 11:30 A.M. after 
a passage of 8g days 21 hours. 

In this year also occurred the historic race between 
the Raven, the Typhoon, and the Sea Witch. Driving 
through the long gray rollers, thrashing to windward off 
the Horn, sweeping to the northward through the trades, 
first one ship, then another, in the lead, they came into 
port in the order given, one day apart. Here was heroic 
sailing, which makes a Sandy Hook yacht race seem 
tame indeed. 

It was in this year, too, that the Surprise raced the 
Sea Witch to San Francisco and won twenty thousand 
dollars for her backers; then, squaring away for China, 
she loaded tea for London and earned for her owners 
fifty thousand dollars over her entire cost and expenses 
on the voyage. Such were the feats of the clippers dur- 
ing the “flush times.” 

As these ocean fliers came homing in from their 
maiden voyages it was found that in most cases the gear 
aloft had been so racked and strained in the wild driving 
they had been sent through that it would need much over- 
hauling and in some ships replacement. This called out 
much study and effort by shipwrights and designers in 
the devising of better methods, for the sparring and rig- 
ging of the new vessels, of still greater tonnage, that 
were coming off the ways. The new fleet of 1852 
brought out thirty-three fine clippers, of which the most 
notable was the Sovereign of the Seas. This ship, the 
work of that veritable genius in the art of shipbuilding, 
Donald McKay of Boston, creator of the Flying Cloud, 


214 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


proved a marvel of speed and beauty. She measured 
258 feet in length, registering 2421 tons, by far the larg- 
est vessel of the year. On her first and only voyage to 
San Francisco, under the command of Lauchlan McKay, 
a brother of her builder, she was almost totally dis- 
masted in a gale off Cape Horn; was rerigged at sea, 
kept going all the time, and made the run in 103 days. 
On her homeward passage she covered during one period 
of 11 days, the distance of 3562 miles. On the 18th of 
March her run was 411 miles, an average rate of 17% 
knots an hour, allowing for her gain of 10° 30’ in longi- 
tude.* 

Then, sailing from New York to Liverpool, she 
reached her port in 13 days 23 hours. Her speed far 
exceeded that of the Cunard steamship Canada, which 
left Boston on the same day. 

In the following year no less than forty-eight ships 
were added to the clipper fleet. The queen among them, 
the four-masted Great Republic, may be regarded as the 
culminating example of the type. She was, when 
launched, 335 feet long and registered 4555 tons. Her 
mainyard was 120 feet in length. Her builder, McKay, 
intended her for the Australian trade, and she loaded in 
New York for her first voyage. On the eve of sailing 
she caught fire at her dock and was burned to the 
water’s edge. The hulk was raised and rebuilt, being 
bought by A. A’. Low & Brother of New York, and she 
then measured 3357 tons, still remaining the largest 
merchant vessel afloat. 

The Great Republic, like several others of the new 


1 All distances, here and elsewhere, are given in marine miles 
of 6080 feet. 


THE LORDLY CLIPPER SHIPS 215 


ships, was fitted with double topsails. This innovation, 
American in origin like so many improvements in the 
sailing ship, soon became, and has remained, universal 
the world over. As now applied, all square-rigged ves- 
sels have their topsails divided horizontally by an addi- 


, 
le a, 
fe ane : I 


SINGLE AND DouBLE ToRPSAIL RIGS ON I9TH CENTURY SHIPS 


tional yard into upper and lower topsails. The lower 
topsail yard, slung on a standing truss to the cap at the 
head of the mast, does not hoist or lower. The upper 
topsail, when dropped in heavy weather, can be handled 
in the lee of the lower one and secured with comparative 
ease by a few men, while the enormous hoist of the old 


216 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


single topsails required the entire crew to smother and 
reef the great sheet of thrashing canvas in a blow. This 
rig, devised in 1853 by Captain Howes of Brewster, 
Massachusetts, is also now applied in large ships to the 
top-gallantsails. 

The year 1854 was the final one in which ships of 
the extreme clipper type were built. The Romance of 
the Seas, the last McKay vessel of this class, carried 
skysails and royal studdingsails clear across the Pacific 
from San Francisco to Hong Kong on one of her voy- 
ages in this year, never once shortening sail during the 
entire passage. California was now getting better or- 
ganized, after the first headlong rush for the gold mines, 
and the shipping interests were becoming stabilized. A 
type of ship which could carry more cargo and stand 
up better under the strain of hard driving was developed. 
These “medium clippers’ were by no means deficient 
in speed, and would at the present time be regarded as 
very sharp and heavily rigged. One of them, the An- 
drew Jackson, afterwards equaled the record of the 
Flying Cloud. ‘The latter ship, still in the hands of 
Captain Creesy, repeated her performance of 1851. 
Creesy commanded a naval vessel during the Civil War, 
and died at Salem in 1871. 

With the discovery of gold in Australia in 1851, 
people began pouring into Melbourne and Sidney in 
multitudes, and our ship-builders took advantage of the 
enthusiasm to launch some of the finest sailing ships 
ever designed. The great work of Lieutenant Maury, 
of the United States Navy, had provided the deep-sea 
navigator with data regarding the winds and currents, 
reduced to a scientific basis, which were of priceless value 


PHE LORDLY CLIPPER: SHIPS, 217 


in enabling them to shorten their voyages to all parts of 
the world. The Australian voyage, out around Cape 
Horn and home by way of the Cape of Good Hope, 
made the circuit of the entire globe. Many of our ships, 
among them the Sovereign of the Seas, were chartered 
by British merchants for this trade. One of these ves- 
sels, the Red Jacket, most famous of the Maine-built 
clippers, made the splendid record out and back from 
Liverpool of 142 days of actual sailing time. 

The firm of James Baines & Co., of Liverpool, desir- 
ing to build the finest ships the world could offer for 
the Australian trade, ordered from McKay of Boston 
four notable vessels—perhaps the greatest quartet of 
wooden clippers ever constructed—the James Baines, 
2515 tons; the Lightning, 2082 tons; the Donald McKay, 
2598 tons; and the Champion of the Seas, 2448 tons. 
To those four were added the Japan and Commodore 
Perry, each of 1964 tons, also built by McKay. In care 
of construction, beauty of finish, and power to carry 
sail, these ships represented the ultimate examples of 
their builder’s unrivaled genius. On her maiden run to 
Liverpool to be turned over to her owners, the Lightning 
covered in one day’s sailing the amazing distance of 436 
miles, the greatest single day’s performance ever made 
under canvas. 

The James Baines made Rock Light, off Liverpool, in 
the record time of 12 days 6 hours. On her first Aus- 
tralian voyage she swept around the world in 132 days. 
Her log records one instance of passing a foreign ship 
under double-reefed topsails, while the Baimes was carry- 
ing a main skysail and going 17 knots! The fastest 
hourly rate of speed ever made by a sailing vessel of 


218 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


which we have authentic knowledge was made by this 
ship on June 17, 1856—21 knots an hour. 

Such were the deeds of American ships and sailors 
in this, the proudest epoch of our seafaring. The 
schooner yacht America had carried off the blue ribbon 
of the sea—the Queen’s Cup—off Cowes in 1851. Our 
sailing ships were unrivaled the world over. For a 
period our sea trade surpassed that of Great Britain, 
measured by profits and efficiency of operation. Ship 
for ship our vessels led the ocean commerce of the world. 
A majestic fleet, commanding twice the freight rates of 
their nearest foreign competitors, dominated the China 
tea trade. The majority of the large American fortunes 
of the day came from shipping and related enterprises, 
and this capital came a few years later to play a large 
part in the building of the transcontinental railroads. 

We should not forget that it was twenty-three years 
before the speed record of the Lightning was approached 
by a steamship—the Arnzona (1887)—which reached 
eighteen knots an hour on her trial trip. The former 
ship had averaged half a knot faster for twenty-four 
hours. 

In none of the great races for international honors, 
by sailing yachts built especially for speed, is there any 
authentic instance of records approaching those of the 
clipper ships of seventy odd years ago. These records, 
be it remembered, were made by vessels which depended 
on the form of the hull for stability, built to carry sail 
in all weathers, and engaged in the freight commerce of 
the world. Yachting is a noble sport, but its vessels are 
rarely of any value for other purposes, depending as 


THE LORDLY CLIPPER SHIPS 219 


they do on outside ballast in the form of weight sus- 
pended on a fin keel. 

In the “fifties, and up to as late as 1875, many fine 
and speedy ships were built in Great Britain to compete 
with our clippers, and with the British steamships that 
were making their appearance in the long-voyage trade. 
These vessels, fast in light or moderate winds, adapted to 
the Chinese tea trade, made a great many excellent voy- 
ages. The most careful and impartial analysis of their 
records, however, fails to show them the equals of our 
clippers in the heyday of their prosperity. 

These noble American ships were all built of wood, 
and were painted black, sometimes with a gold or crim- 
son stripe about the hull. The lower masts were usually 
painted white up to the tops, with the lower yards and 
bowsprits black. To an impressive air of power and 
speed they added a trim and yacht-like beauty, quite dif- 
ferent from the iron sailing ships of later years. They 
are gone, with the men who sailed them, but the vision 
of the lordly clipper, her high-tiered skysails and wide- 
winged stun’s’ls against the background of the long gray 
seas, sweeping round Cape Horn with the sea-birds 
squalling in her wake, still dwells in the mind, an inspir- 
ing memory to those who love ships and the ocean. 


CHAPTER XII 
THE LAKE AND RIVER MEN 


ERY early indeed in our history the great mid- 
continental lakes and water-courses became the 
scene of hardy effort in the quest for openings into the 
wilderness. Following the ways of the Indians, the fur 
seekers of the Hudson Bay Company furrowed the 
waters of Superior in their bateaux and canoes, and even 
built a canal where now the busy “Soo” detours the 
falls of Ste. Marie, providing their little waterway with 
a lock, which has since been reconstructed by the Gov- 
ernment, that travelers might view it. The first sailing 
craft to appear on the lakes of which we have account 
was the Griffon, a little brigantine built in 1679 by La 
Salle on salt-water lines. She was of 60 tons, armed and 
manned by sailors from the ocean, and in her La Salle 
explored Lake Erie from where Buffalo now drives its 
busy commerce, passing into Lake Michigan and Green 
Bay. After that, for many long years, the lonely off- 
shore waters of the vast lakes saw hardly a sail. A cen- 
tury later, or thereabouts, six sloops and three schooners 
made up the whole fleet on Michigan, Huron, and Erie. 
The rugged voyageurs and half-breeds preferred the 
bateaux and canoes to which they were accustomed, and 
the sail craft were largely handled by salt-water men. 


220 


LAKE AND RIVER MEN 221 


After the War of 1812, with its historic lake battles, 
the inrush of settlers and the consequent need of supply- 
transport provided the lakes with a rapidly growing fleet, 
among whose varied types of craft were not a few size- 
able square-riggers. Leading into the trackless wild 
from the lake shores, every stream or inlet served as a 
road to be traveled in some floating vehicle—a canoe, 
or rough flatboat, or a dugout. A few of the shore 


BYGONE TYPES ON THE GREAT LAKES, THE TRIANGULAR “ RAFFIE”’ 
FORETOPSAIL WAS PECULIAR TO THOSE WATERS, 


towns took on something of the aspect of seaports, with 
lighthouses at Buffalo and Erie. In the year 1818 a 
steamboat, the Walk-in-the-Water, was placed on the 
route from Buffalo to Detroit. Four years later, when 
she was lost in an October gale, the people of the latter 
settlement felt the greatest concern at being thus de- 
prived of regular communication, but only a few years 
had passed when other little steamboats began to appear, 
forerunners of the impressive fleets that now pass in con- 


222 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


stant succession up and down the lakes, and which crowd 
the “Soo” Canal, locking through day and night all 
summer long. 

The need of free communication between Huron and 
Superior was felt from the very beginning of lake navi- 
gation. The way through.the Saint Mary’s River was 
barred by the “Sault,” or leap, of Sainte Marie, so named 
by the early French explorers, a waterfall of consider- 
able size. 

When, therefore, the importance of the copper de- 
posits along Lake Superior became apparent, steps were 
taken to build a canal around the falls, resulting in the 
first “Soo”? Canal, opened in 1855. There were at that 
date nearly twelve hundred vessels employed on the 
lakes, an increase of fivefold within twenty years. Ex- 
perience in great lake navigation, so rapidly expanding 
in volume, brought with it a knowledge of the special 
problems to be met, very different, but equally exigent 
of courage and resource to those of the ocean. Always 
on a lee shore, with uncertain anchorage and rare havens 
of shelter, the lake sailor needs skill and alertness to 
keep out of trouble in the sudden gales, the high, short 
~seas, and the bitter cold water of these inland oceans. 
His seamanship in its special field is of a very high 
order indeed. The early sailors on the lakes brought 
with them, naturally, their salt water methods which had 
to be adapted to the new conditions. They built luggers 
and sloops and schooners with square topsails, as well 
as brigs, and even full-rigged ships, like those on the 
ocean. Having to feel their way in uncharted waters, 
to run in and out of the streams, or to seek sudden shel- 
ter from the gales, they learned to build vessels of light 


LAKE AND RIVER MEN 223 


draft and broad beam, using the unseasoned timber, 
sometimes unfamiliar to them in its application to ship- 
building, which was found in the shore forests. The 
boatmen of the fur-trading companies employed, besides 
the birch canoes of the Indians, barges and bateaux, 
which were large flat-bottomed boats for poling or row- 
ing, of shallow draft. 

It is probable that the feverish activity of the latter 
part of the War of 1812, which resulted in the building 
of vessels of really large tonnage, may have led to some 
valuable lessons, as to the possibility of employing ships 
of considerable draft on the lakes. One of these war- 
ships, the New Orleans, measured 3200 tons displacement. 
Her great hull, which was never launched, moldered 
away on the stocks near Sackett’s Harbor. At Kings- 
ton, Ontario, a ship of 3000 tons, the St. Lawrence, was 
set afloat by the British, but the war ended before she 
saw real action. This vessel drew no less than twenty- 
seven feet, when fully equipped with stores and battery. 
An old print in the Toronto Public Library, depicting 
the action between the American sloop-of-war Pike and 
the British Wolfe in 1813, shows two full-rigged ships, 
with staysails, spritsails, and all the gear of ocean war- 
ships of the period. It is hard nowadays to realize that 
such vessels actually sailed the lakes, but it is not so 
many years since people were living who had seen them. 

Some ten years ago the hulk of Perry’s old flagship 
in the battle of Lake Erie, the Niagara, which had iain 
submerged for eighty-eight years, was raised and floated 
at Erie. She showed a beamy, shallow hull, of which 
the seams had been “payed,” or coated, with lead, a 
practise said to date back to the Armada. 


224. THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


The traffic of the lakes, keeping pace with the rapid 
influx of immigration in the first half of the nineteenth 
century, grew very fast through that period. The 
schooner, with a square, and in some cases a triangular 
topsail with a single lower yard, was the favorite rig. 
This three-cornered topsail, called a “‘raffie,’ was pecu- 
liar to the lakes. Steamers, usually side-wheelers, be- 
came more numerous, with a few wooden screw-pro- 
pellers. All the early steam craft on the lakes used wood 
for fuel. Guns were fired as signals, then bells came 
into use, and it is of interest to know that the first steam 
whistle was employed at Rochester in 1844. In the same 
year the first steamer of more than 1000 tons in the 
United States was built at Cleveland. It was in 1840 
that the screw steamer Vandalia made its appearance at 
Oswego, and six years later there were twenty-six pro- 
pellers on the lakes. The fleet at this time comprised, 
besides, 67 side-wheel steamers, 3 barques, 340 schoon- 
ers, and 64 brigs. The last of the lake brigs disappeared 
in 1869. I shall have more to say further on of the 
amazing development of lake shipping during the last 
fifty years, brought about through the grain and ore 
trade, and the interesting ships of special build and 
enormous size that ply up and down the inland seas for 
seven months in the year. 

During the early time while the lake sailors were lay- 
ing the bases of the present mighty structure of our 
fresh-water shipping trade, other venturesome pioneers 
were threading the continent on the rivers beyond the 
Alleghanies. As the problems and difficulties they had 
to meet were novel, the methods employed came to take 
on a special character, unlike those common in older 


LAKE AND RIVER MEN 225 


lands, and the influence of these methods still survives, 
above all on the Mississippi Valley waterways. 

We scarcely realize today how great a volume of im- 
migration poured into this portion of the country at a 
very early date. The Revolution was hardly over when 
the settlers were rushing in by the thousands, using the 
rivers as their roads into the rich new territories. In 
this ready tendency to take to the water may be traced 
the influence of the seafaring ancestors of our people. 
There have been instances in history of civilizations 
which were brought to a stand by their water-barriers, 
but the North American pioneers saw in their lakes and 
rivers the highways for further penetration, and while 
the hardy men of the coast were faring to distant seas, 
their brethren were pushing into the wilderness in their 
scows and flatboats by the water roads of the Near 
West. 

The principal northern route into the country about 
the Great Lakes was that by way of the Mohawk Valley. 
Carrying over the divide between the Mohawk River 
and Wood Creek, they worked down that stream to 
Oneida Lake, taking the Seneca River for the Western 
settlements, while the Oswego River to Lake Ontario 
served as the way to Canada and the Far West. Be- 
ginning with “pirogues”’ or dugouts, canoes of larger 
capacity, more than thirty feet long, were used by the 
traders, then bateaux of red cedar with high bows and 
sloping sides, having no keels. Later came the Macki- 
nac boat, a sort of barge for towing or poling, and at 
the height of the Mohawk River traffic, the “Durham 
boats,” from which were adapted the first boats used on 
the Erie Canal. The rivermen became very expert in 


226 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


propelling these craft, which were worked up-stream 
with long iron-shod poles provided with a shoulder- 
piece. They would crouch on their hands and knees 
in the forward part of the boat, the pole braced in the 
hollow of the shoulder, and crawl aft along the length 


a if — Woy ah 
“<4 


““BROADHORN’’ FLATBOATMEN ON THE MISSISSIPPI. 


of the gunwale, throwing the entire weight of the body 
against the pole—an acrobatic performance that required 
special training. 

Just as the Great Lakes provided a water-borne route 
into the Northwest, the Ohio River carried the pioneers 
through to the Mississippi River, and the tide of traffic 
began early to flow along its mighty current. Reckless, 


LAKE AND RIVER MEN 227 


rugged men clad in buckskin, wearing coonskin caps with 
the tail left on at the back, swarmed on the flat-boats ; 
rough, shallow scows which were sold for lumber at 
New Orleans. These boats were guided by long oars 
extending far out on either side, from which they took 
the name “broadhorns.” Below the junction of the 
Wabash with the Ohio, at Shawneetown, Illinois, the 
boatmen of the Ohio ended their westbound journey. 

Down the yellow flood of the Mississippi, from Cairo 
to the Gulf, the broadhorns drifted, their crews amusing 
themselves with rough merriment, fiddling, dancing, and 
horse-play, with an occasional not unwelcome battle with 
the lurking Indians along the banks. The up-river voy- 
ages were made in keel-boats, which were poled, or 
dragged with ropes, in toilsome struggle against the 
current. The river-life bred a class of men whose stoical 
endurance of hardships together with their skill in deal- 
ing with the vagaries of the restless, ever-shifting Mis- 
sissippi, set them specially apart among the different 
elements of the pioneer population. Mark Twain, who 
had been a Mississippi steamboat pilot, has told us about 
these people in Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mis- 
Sisstp pi. 

In the application of steam to vessel-propulsion, which 
came about at the very time when the demand for the 
exploitation of new water routes was becoming urgent, 
the early rivermen possessed an instrumentality unknown 
to their forefathers. Having the maneuvering advan- 
tages of the various forms of oar-driven craft, the river 
steamboat permitted the employment of much more 
roomy and dependable units of transportation. This 


228 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


would never have been possible with sail-craft, requiring 
broad water-stretches for beating against adverse winds, 
and difficult to manage in swift currents. The river 
steamboat therefore came to rank very high among the 
agencies of our national expansion. 

In its early form its hull-construction clearly reflects 
the influence of the salt-water tradition. A print of 
1833 shows the projecting bow, with the topsides run- 
ning back to a semi-elliptical stern pierced by a horizon- 
tal row of windows, as in ocean vessels of the time. 
The hope was strong in the early days, that means might 
be found of shipping the produce of the river valley 
directly through to the ocean, and thence oversea, in ves- 
sels that could make the entire voyage without breaking 
bulk. A full-rigged ship, the St. Clair, was taken clear 
down the Ohio from Marietta as early as 1800, con- 
tinuing her voyage down the Mississippi and round to 
Philadelphia. The experiment was not repeated, how- 
ever, and as time went on and steamboats multiplied on 
the river, it came to be accepted that special types of 
craft would be required to deal with the often baffling 
conditions met with in navigating the turbid stream. 
Eventually, the river boats came to take on their fa- 
miliar character, which has changed little for many 
years. Of shallow draft and light construction, fitted 
with wood-burning engines of low-pressure type, they 
coughed their way up and down the lonely reaches of 
the Mississippi River, to rouse the shore villages into mo- 
mentary excitement by their passage, the only contact 
the river people had with the outside world. The hey- 
day of steamboating was reached in the days just before 


EWORL ceed i 
MEMPAIS & 
EY, LOLS 


ABOVE: AN EARLY MississippI RIVER PACKET, ABOUT 1835. 
BELow: AN UP-TO-DATE RIVER STEAMBOAT AT THE LEVEE. 


Syd ow i 


ae ke 
Poi ie ey 4, 
fea ot Tee y 

ORE Baer (oN 


LAKE AND RIVER MEN 231 


the Civil War. Mark Twain was then a pilot on the 
river, and he has left us an account which preserves the 
very color of that unique period of Mississippi River life. 

Right into the heart of the continent to the point 
where Kansas City now stands and beyond, the way was 
found up the Missouri, while the Red River, the Arkan- 
sas, and the Tennessee provided routes of penetration 
into vast areas which would find in them, when the need 
should come, their outlets toward the sea. Here, then 
were developing new conditions which would have an 
immense influence on our ocean shipping. The coast 
dwellers, who had looked outward over the horizon for 
a field of effort, began to take account of the widening 
opportunities brought into notice by the opening of the 
inland seas and rivers, and their capital, so largely 
brought in by their seafaring enterprise, began to be 
diverted from oversea employment by the expanding 
trade of the interior. Already the energies of the Amer- 
ican people, turning to the creation of the mightiest net- 
work of internal transportation that the world has ever 
seen, were swinging away from the ocean, where so 
much splendid history had been made, to these inland 
activities, whose history was just beginning. With due 
pride in our nautical achievements, we cannot withhold 
our praise from the rugged men who traveled the lakes 
and rivers into the trackless wilds, to whose pluck and 
tenacity we owe the conquest of the Central territory, 
and ultimately the opening up of the great Northwest. 
The shipping tonnage employed on the Great Lakes to- 
day and in coast-to-coast voyaging, the Panama Canal, 
the immense development of our iron, steel, and fuel 


232 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


resources, with their bearing on our future deep-sea fleet, 
whenever we may choose to follow the ocean again— 
as sooner or later we must—all these we owe to the 
water-borne pioneers. 


CHAPTER XIII 
THE PASSING OF THE SAILING SHIP 


Ng now we have arrived at a period which, lasting 
some fifty-five years, saw our foreign carrying- 
trade decline to about one-seventh of its former volume, 
as measured by the proportion moved in our own ships. 
We are coming to see now that this decline was inevit- 
able, under the influence of the great and necessary task 
of internal development. And yet, if during these years 
we lost our oversea position, we gained in compensation 
the mighty water-borne commerce of the Lakes, and a 
coasting-fleet that continued to keep us among the lead- 
ing maritime powers of the world. 

After the triumphs of our sailing ships in the ’fifties 
came a short period of depression, such as the carrying 
trade has always had now and then to encounter, on the 
heels of which the Civil War broke out, with its demands 
on the merchant fleet for naval and transport tonnage. 
In the course of the strife many ships were also burned 
or captured, and others sold to foreign owners. Mean- 
while the progress of iron ship-building abroad was over- 
coming the great advantage due to our timber resources. 
With the increasing employment of steamships had ap- 
peared the policy of granting subsidies to their builders 
by foreign governments. The Suez Canal, open in 1869, 


233 


234 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


shortened the voyage to the Far East, permitting many 
steam vessels to carry enough bunker coal for the pas- 
sage, so that our ships could no longer compete with 
them under sail, in the general carrying-trade to India 
or China. 

Means might conceivably have been found of meeting 
these adverse conditions, but the attention of our people 
was turning from the sea to the mighty possibilities of 
domestic expansion. Incident to this expansion was the 
demand for rail-development, which absorbed money and 
energy that might, under other circumstances, have 
sought employment on the ocean. The dazzling lures of 
gold and silver mining, of coal and iron and the fabu- 
lous wealth of the newly opening West diverted the 
limited man-power of our still youthful country to ac- 
tivities within the confines of our national domain. 
Great industries, drawing on the raw materials taken 
from the soil, were appearing, to provide our people with 
goods they had been obliged to import in earlier years, 
while tariffs for the protection of these industries made 
it increasingly difficult for our ships to find return car- 
goes, so necessary if they were to show a profit. Pe- 
troleum was fast replacing whale-oil, and our “‘spouters” 
found their greasy harvests no longer in demand. Rail- 
roads were stretching clear across the continent, to com- 
pete with the Cape Horn clippers. 

It must be said, too, that our people, who had seen 
Fulton’s Clermont open the era of steam navigation, 
and who had sent the first steam vessel—the Savannah 
—across the Western Ocean in 1819, were dilatory in 
turning from sail to steam. The prestige of our sailing 
ships was no doubt a factor in this backwardness, to a 


PASSING OF THE SAILING SHIP 23 


large extent. There was some reason for it, for even 
today most cargo steamships would be hard put to it to 
equal the records made on long voyages, such as that to 
Australia, by the flying clippers of the ‘fifties. When 
the Lightning ran 436 nautical miles in twenty-four 
hours there was not a steamship afloat that could come 
within a hundred miles of it. Indeed, it was a genera- 
tion before it was equaled under steam, and there are 
few cargo vessels that can surpass it at the present day. 

Our marine engineers hardly kept pace, up till twenty- 
five years ago, with the changing developments which 
led up to the perfect triple-expansion engine. Iron hull 
construction, too, was backward with us, in the light 
of British progress from 1860 onward, and our builders 
clung too long to the paddle-wheel in their deep-sea 
steamers. As far back as 1843 an iron ship, the Bangor, 
had been built on the Delaware. Ericsson, who first 
demonstrated the screw propeller in 1837, spent most 
of his life among us. The fact was that the laggard 
progress of these innovations in our merchant fleet re- 
flected the influence of our superlative wooden sailing 
ships. When the change came from iron to mild steel, 
a material which is stronger, more easily worked and 
which permits of lighter hull-construction than does 
iron, our builders were still further distanced by their 
competitors in the handling of this new metal—a handi- 
cap that lasted a number of years. 

I have before mentioned the ill-starred Collins fleet 
of North Atlantic steamships, which, in their day, led 
the van in this service. These vessels, built of wood and 
propelled by paddle-wheels, were designed by Steers of 
America fame. They were by far the finest passenger 


236 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT, SHIPS 


ships of their time the world over. Sectional jealousies, 
joined to the disasters which befell two of them, com- 
parable with the loss of the Titanic a few years ago, 
were fatal to the enterprise. Thus failed our bid for 
leadership in the steam traffic of the North Atlantic, at 
the period when this important business was just begin- 
ning, and it passed into British hands, where it has con- 
tinued, in the main, ever since. 


A Trans-Paciric MAIL-LINER OF 1867. 


Many interesting American steamships were, how- 
ever, built and employed in other services during the 
decade from 1860 to 1870. An outstanding example of 
our best steam vessels of the time was the Vanderbilt, 
a side-wheeler of 3361 tons, then regarded as the fast- 
est steamship afloat. She was presented by Commodore 
Vanderbilt, her owner, to the government at the outbreak 
of the Civil War, and rendered useful service in the 
blockading squadron. | 

In the transpacific trade our flag flew over the Pacific 
Mail lines to the Orient and to Panama. At the latter 


PASSING OF THE SAILING SHIP, 237 


port mails and passengers, usually accompanied by a 
shipment of gold from the mines, were transshipped 
across the Isthmus to Aspinwall (now Colon), whence 
they were carried to New York in steamships which, 
with the Pacific vessels, composed what was then the 
finest and most modern fleet under our flag. Our over- 
sea trade on the Pacific, unlike that of the North Atlan- 
tic, continued to employ a number of steam liners all 
through the years up to the World War, to show our 
flag in the Far East. 

It is well to bear in mind that, while our foreign deep- 
sea fleet was losing ground, as compared with its posi- 
tion in earlier years, we were by no means abandoning 
the sea. The sailing trade around the Horn lasted, in 
some degree, right up to the opening of the Panama 
Canal. Out of Boston sailed many a tall square-rigger 
bound for India or Australia with ice from the New 
England lakes—a trade that held on till well into the 
eighties. This period saw the development of the splen- 
did schooners with four, five, even up to seven masts, 
such fore-and-afters as had never before been dreamed 
of. Many of them surpassed the tonnage of our largest 
ships of earlier days, and their lines showed, and still 
show, their family resemblance to the typical American 
sailing ships whose evolution we have traced from far 
back into antiquity. 

No doubt the American clipper sailing ship reached 
her finest expression in Donald McKay’s Great Republic. 

Types of fuller-bodied ships, stout, able, and hand- 
some, continued, however, to come from the Maine 
builders for many years after the Civil War. The last 
specimen of these wooden square-riggers was the four- 


238 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


masted Aryan, in 1893. The iron sailing ship Dirigo 
was also a fine example of their skill. She was sunk 
early in the World War by a German submarine. The 
Down-East ship-builders still retain their well-merited 
reputation, and many of their shipwrights contributed 
their experience to the wooden fleet constructed during 
the War emergency. One of their ships, the Henry B. 
Hyde, a full-built vessel, deeply loaded, is credited with 
a passage from New York to San Francisco in 102 days, 
as late as 1909. 

A’ special interest attaches to the last of McKay’s 
great sailing ships, the Glory of the Seas, launched in 
1869. Although she was by no means an extreme clip-' 
per, she was a very beautiful ship, which proved in 1874 
by a ninety-five day record from New York to San 
Francisco that adverse conditions had not deprived our 
sailors of their skill. Her last Cape Horn voyage was 
made in 1885, and she was still afloat as a refrigerating 
ship at Tacoma, as late as 1921. 

Our monopoly of the coasting-trade has served to 
keep alive the breezy tradition of the sailing ship. Long 
after our square-riggers had grown scarce off-soundings, 
the coast horizon was flecked with the white sails of our 
handsome schooners, brigs, and barkentines, beginning 
to bear the special interest which attaches to a passing 
and romantic phase of seafaring. Meanwhile it was 
being found profitable to make up long tows of barges 
in the coastwise, lake and river trades. In the wake of 
powerful towing steamers the bulkier freights—coal, 
lumber, and so on—could thus be moved with great econ- 
omy. Many a lofty sailing ship, with her spars re- 
moved, has ended her days in this traffic. The full story 


PASSINGV OF THE, SAILING SHIP 239 


of the risks and hardships of the barge trade has yet to 
be told, of wintry seas and breaking hawsers, of despair- 
ing men lost on drifting derelicts. Such a tale would 
remind us that seafaring, even in this twentieth century, 
still remains the most perilous of human occupations. 


SN 
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= ie 


Yh ("Ait A AN 


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Mes; AN 
f_ Y 


A Woopen FoRE-AND-AFTER, AND A STEEL SQUARE-RIGGER OF THE 
’ 
"NINETIES. 


In tracing the course of the slow decline of our over- 
sea shipping we yet find repeated instances of native apti- 
tude for the sea. No better seamen are to be found 
than the fishermen out of Gloucester, first home of the 
schooner, and the neighboring ports. Far out to the 
eastward they ply their trade, accepting the ever-present 
risks of being sunk by the rushing transatlantic liners, 
or the loss of dories and their crews on the foggy banks 


240 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


in search of cod and halibut, while closer inshore the 
mackerel are pursued from March till November, and 
whenever the glass (the barometer) begins to fall, the 
fishermen must bear away to seaward lest they be caught 
in a northeaster with the land close under their lee. The 
men who fish the outer banks—Brown’s Bank, La Have, 
and Western Bank, St. Peter’s, and the Grand Bank of 
Newfoundland—work the year around. Their skill and 
daring have become legendary. The schooners engaged 
in this industry, built on yacht-like lines, fast and able, 
are unequaled in the fishing fleets of Europe. They 
bear the honorable stains of toil, for they follow a rough, 
hard-driving trade, but whoever knows vessels will ap- 
preciate the craftsmanship of the men who have worked 
together to produce them, among them some of our most 
skilled designers of racing yachts. Studies initiated by 
the United States Fish\Commission in the early ’eighties 
with a view of providing the Bank fishermen with 
schooners that should be seaworthy as well as fast 
brought about the present type. Its starting point was 
the Fredonia, designed by Edward Burgess of cup-de- 
fender fame. She was 114 feet long, displacing 188 
tons. Some years later the famous designer Crownin- 
shield (a descendant of the great Salem shipping family 
of that name) produced a model with the greatest draft 
at the bottom of the sharply raking stern-post, the fore- 
foot being cut away like a racing yacht, under a long 
overhanging bow. ‘These fishing schooners are justly 
renowned abroad, as they deserve to be. The racing 
between them and the Nova Scotia boats, manned with 
equal skill, has the keenest sporting interest. 

In all our vessels, whether driven by steam or borne 


PASSING OF THE SAILING SHIP 241 


along by the wind, can be traced the influence of our 
sea heritage. We are told that a scientist can construct 
the entire frame of a prehistoric monster froma fragment 
of bone—a tooth or a knee-joint. Just so the men of 
the sea could tell us, blindfolded, by the shape of a lathe- 
turned stanchion or the section of a moulding, whether 
a ship was American-built or not. Some of these details 
have persisted since the earliest days, and they reappear 
in the lake vessels and the river steamboats. 

With the tendency of our people to go at their problems 
in direct and practical ways, it is not surprising that they 
have shown the way with so many of the labor-saving 
devices that have characterized our ships. The same 
mental processes that led them to be first to bend a sail 
to the bare cross-jack-yard, to divide the topsails into 
the handy double rig, since universal, to apply hollow 
water-lines to their speedy vessels, reappear in the later 
vessels. | 

The Great Republic had been the first sailing ship to 
employ steam power for hoisting the sails and working 
the pumps, and the large schooners of the late nineteenth 
century went the limit in their steam appliances for han- 
dling sails and anchors, for steering-gear and even for 
electric lighting. The same tendency, be it said, ap- 
peared in the planning of the wartime Emergency Fleet. 

During these years the Great Lake builders created 
immense cargo vessels on original lines, “whalebacks,” 
“ore-pigs,” and the like, peculiar to the grain, coal, and 
ore trade on those waters, influenced by a season of, 
say, seven months in the year, when these bulk cargoes 
must be moved in tremendous volume, and they accom- 
plished wonders in their methods of operating them. 


242 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


Meanwhile our protected coasting-trade set afloat a 
fleet of modern steamships unequaled in similar traffic 
elsewhere in the world. Along the North River docks 
of New York these liners offered (and still offer) an 
impressive perspective of seagoing vessels, stich a coast- 
ing-fleet as could not be rivaled in any foreign port in 
either hemisphere. Their voyages around Cape Hatteras 
to the Gulf were and are a test of staunchness and skill 


oe ee ae 


wea 
aa 
= 
7 . 


AN AMERICAN COASTING LINER, 1900. 


calling for all the qualities required in deep-sea naviga- 
tion in any ocean. Many of the coastwise steamships 
in these and other services have exceeded the tonnage 
of most transoceanic merchant ships, and they show 
specially American features. 

The paddle-wheel steamship, direct descendant of Ful- 
ton’s Clermont, lingered in our deep-sea marine till well 
into the ’seventies, and our unrivaled lake and river 
services have always employed the paddle-wheel in many 
of their boats. In spite of its obvious advantages at sea, 


PASSING OF THE SAILING SHIP 243 


the screw propeller had met with the difficulties that 
attend all innovations, but by 1880 the application of the 
paddle-wheel to important ships in the foreign trade was 
hopelessly out of date. It is said that twin screws had 
been tried experimentally on the Hudson very early in 
the nineteenth century. However this may be, the 
cruiser Pawnee of Civil War days was equipped with 
twin screws, and Griffeths, her designer, even advo- 
cated the triple-screw ship at that early date. When 
the British steamer City of Paris, which afterwards 
figured in the American Line, appeared in 1888, it may 
be said that the case was won for the twin-screw method 
of propulsion in merchant vessels. The chance of dis- 
ablement from a fracture of the tail-shaft was thus re- 
duced by one-half, while a ship could also be maneuvered 
in the event of injury to the rudder by the alternate use 
of the propellers. 

After the eighties, great modern building and repair 
plants grew up, favored by government contracts for 
warship construction. South of Philadelphia on the Del- 
aware River, at Newport News; about New York; at 
Weymouth Fore River in Boston Harbor; at the Union 
Iron Works, near San Francisco; and at various other 
points were developed shipbuilding yards which were 
able within a few years to demonstrate their ability to 
meet any problems in the construction of modern ocean- 
going vessels. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, 
it became apparent that the sea-coast yards were over- 
coming the technical handicaps in modern steel ship- 
building and engine design that had so long hampered 
them. The new ships they were producing were well 
up to the standards of the best foreign practise. 


244 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


The brave old square-riggers were growing fewer and 
fewer off-soundings, and more and more the sailorman 
was drifting “into steam.” The sullen clang of slice- 
bar and shovel, wielded by brawny, streaming stokers 
in the dazzling glare of open furnace doors was coming 
to replace the stamping cadence of the watch on deck 
to the hoarse topsail chantey, and greasy engineers, la- 
boring in the oily reek of the engine room, intent and 
taciturn, watched over the mighty masses of steel, as 
they rocked and thrust in their ceaseless task for days 
and weeks on end. 

To enter upon a technical treatise on marine engineer- 
ing would demand too much space for a work of this 
kind, but perhaps we may here venture to consider, in a 
general way, the progress made previous to the World 
War. 

In the form of engine which was employed in the 
earlier steamships, the steam passed from the boiler into 
the cylinder, thence, after expending but a fraction of 
its energy, into a condenser to be cooled into water again, 
and from there back into the boiler. This was followed 
in 1854 by the compound engine, in which the live steam 
passed through more than one cylinder before conden- 
sation. The triple-expansion engine, as its name im- 
plies, improved on the existing compound engines by 
using additional cylinders to extract more of the heat 
energy from the steam, and the quadruple-expansion 
engine went further in the same direction. Toward 
1900 ships were provided with two, and even four, sets 
of engines, and about this time appeared the turbine. In 
this type, the live steam was driven through a “rotor” 
mounted directly on the propeller drive-shaft and pro- 


PASSING OF THE SAILING SHIP 245 


vided with a number of thin curved blades against which 
the steam was forced, thus causing it to revolve much 
in the manner of a turbine waterwheel in a mill. This 
engine, direct in its action instead of reciprocating, re- 
quired no cranks or connecting-rods, and thus did away 
with much vibration, and could besides be of much less 
weight and size than the older types. Smaller turbines 
were provided for reversing the propellers. What might 
be called the turbine phase of marine propulsion, result- 
ing from the improvements devised in England by the 
Hon. C. A. Parsons, came in with the Allan liner Vir- 
ginian in 1905, and within a year of that time such 
engines were being built in the United States. 

By this time, as a result of the efforts to find a fuel 
less bulky of stowage and more easily handled in the 
fireroom than coal, ships were being equipped with ap- 
pliances for the burning of oil under the boilers. The 
oil, being pumped into tanks aboard the vessel and fed 
through pipes to the heating points, did away with the 
troublesome shoveling and trimming incidental to coal. 
Ships for deep-sea voyages could stow oil enough, in 
many cases, to make their entire round voyages with- 
out being obliged to stop at coaling points which were 
often out of their most direct routes. 

The development of the internal combustion engine 
for automobiles and motor craft soon brought about, 
as was to be expected, a type of heavy-duty marine 
engine for large vessels. This was known as the Diesel 
engine, from its German designer. It consumed crude 
or slow-burning fuel oil in a row of upright cylinders, 
driving its crank-shaft in much the same manner as does 
the automobile motor. Its compactness and economy 


246 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


led to its installation in many of the newer vessels, with 
excellent results. ? 

During the period which saw the advent of the great 
liners, sail power had gradually been reduced on steam- 
ships. In the early days after its introduction, steam 
had been merely auxiliary to the sails; then the sails had 
been auxiliary to the steam engines; finally, the sails 
disappeared altogether, and the masting with its com- 
plicated network of standing and running rigging, which 
derived from our most ancient nautical forebears, was 
replaced by mere poles for signaling and derricks for 
handling cargo. 

A sailing ship’s hull is forced along through the water 
by the pressure of the wind applied to immense levers 
in the form of masts, working often at a wide angle 
from the perpendicular. A steam vessel is pushed by a 
propeller wheel at her stern acting against the inert 
medium of the water. The differences in their behavior, 
under the influences of wind and wave, had naturally 
been the subject of much study. It was not till the com- 
promises required, so long as steamships carried sail- 
power, were no longer necessary, that many of the les- 
sons could be applied. The years from 1885 to the open- 
ing of the new century saw a very rapid departure, 
therefore, from the traditional ship-forms based on sail- 
propulsion. Steam vessels became flat on the floor, with 
keels running fore and aft along the outside on the 
“bilges,”’ where the flat bottom rounds up into the up- 
right sides, to reduce rolling in a seaway by the resist- 
ance. When the twin-screw steamship with triple- 
expansion engines became the standard in marine prac- 
tise much experiment went on, which still continues, in- 


PASSING OF THE SAILING SHIP 247 


fluenced by the additional propellers added on the later 
ships, in order to find the best form for the stern. 

The double bottom first appeared on the famous Great 
Eastern in 1858. When she tore an immense hole in 
her outer skin on a submerged rock, and remained tight 
and dry within, its value was demonstrated. The obvi- 
ous military advantages of the water-tight compartment 
system, too, had led to its development on warships to 
a high degree, and merchant vessels soon came to be 
divided into many inner cells, or boxes, which could be 
insulated from one another by water-tight doors between 
in the bulkheads, controlled from the bridge. 

Our withdrawal from the deep-sea carrying-trade 
made it necessary for our constructors, in order to fol- 
low the rapid developments abroad, to send representa- 
tives oversea, who were permitted by the courtesy, par- 
ticularly of the British builders, to perfect their knowl- 
edge in the plants and technical schools, This had its 
bearing on the vessels launched in the twenty years pre- 
ceding the Great War. The postal subsidy act of 1891 
produced the St. Paul and St. Lomis, the first strictly 
modern transatlantic liners built in the United States. 
Some ten years later the Kroonland and Finland were 
built on the Delaware, while not long after a number 
of fine up-to-date steamships, of which the Manchuria 
may be taken as a representative, appeared in the lines 
running out of San Francisco. Notable as well were 
the great freighters built for the China trade out of our 
northwestern ports by the late James J. Hill. One of 
these, the Minnesota, did useful service in 1918 in the 
transport of troops to France. While these liners, in 
common with similar vessels all over the world, showed 


248 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


only differences of detail from generally accepted prac- 
tises, they served to demonstrate that American builders, 
given an opportunity, were prepared to construct modern 
steamships equal to any in the world. 

The Great Lakes cargo carriers developed during this 


, 
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WY) 


A LAKE OrE-sHIP DISCHARGING CARGO. 


later period, which have largely succeeded to the odd 
whale-backs, so suggestive of the submarine, and to the 
steel towing barges, are enormous in size, holding per- 
haps fifteen thousand tons of ore. They are built of 
steel, high forward with a deck-house for the officers, 
on which is the navigating bridge. Then for several 
hundred feet, broken only by hatches for loading and 


PASSING OF THE SAILING SHIP, 249 


discharging, runs the level deck, aft to the structure at 
the stern which houses the engines. The intermediate 
part of the hull is merely a huge steel trough to hold 
the red earthy ore, and can be filled or emptied in a few 
hours. American constructors, working in a native field, 
have here produced a unique type of cargo ship reduced 
to its simplest possible form. Not the least interesting 
feature of the lake trade is the titanic machinery for 
the dock-handling of these rough bulk cargoes. Rows 
of towering “bucket-unloaders,’ swaying in ponderous 
rhythm, transfer coal or ore at the rate of unbelievable 
thousands of tons in the course of a few hours. 

In 1914, at the outbreak of the War in Europe, our 
merchant fleet had a capacity of nearly twelve million 
dead-weight tons, of which less than one-tenth was em- 
ployed in trade with foreign ports. The two years fol- 
lowing, under the pressure of the sudden and immense 
demand for tonnage, saw many ships diverted from 
domestic to oversea employment. As it became evident 
that we were certain to be involved in the strife, meas- 
ures were taken to meet the situation, leading finally 
to the tremendous effort of 1918. 

The Emergency Fleet has been termed the greatest 
single industrial feat ever undertaken in history. It has 
been compared with the building of the Pyramids, or 
the Great Wall of China. We are now to take account 
of this mighty effort, and of its results. 


CHAPTER XIV 
THE GREAT NEW FLEET OF THE WAR-TIME 


if I were concerned primarily with the economics of 
our shipping, I might go to great length in detailing 
the causes and costs of our prodigious effort during the 
World War in ship-building. But all that is recent, and 
those details may easily be found in the press of the last 
few years. My task is to trace the relation of this 
effort to our nautical tradition, and to picture How the 
ships and sailors sprang into being within a few short 
months. No such maritime expansion was ever known 
before in the history of the world, nor could any other 
nation have accomplished it. 

We have seen how, for almost a century in our his- 
tory, our ships were regarded as vital to our national 
welfare; how from the halting and difficult struggles of 
colonial beginnings, overcoming the handicaps of war, 
our wide-winged clippers came at length to be the noblest 
examples of merchant vessels on the seven seas; how 
the business of manning and handling them commanded 
the pride and interest of the nation. We have outlined 
the causes that led to our virtual withdrawal from the 
deep-sea carrying-trade, so that while three-fourths of 
our oversea commerce was carried in American ships in 
1850, sixty years later they handled less than one-tenth; 


250 
> 


FLEET OF THE WAR-TIME 251 


and we have also seen how the latent aptitude of our 
people for the sea has continued, in spite of all, to mani- 
fest itself, 

Our coastwise and lake traffic employed nearly seven 
million tons of shipping at the outbreak of the War. 
Our modern shipyards, though few in number, had 
demonstrated their ability, in naval and ocean-liner con- 
struction as well as in the fine ships they built for the 
coasting-trade, to produce vessels equal to any in the 
world. 

No prophet, or son of a prophet, however, could have 
foreseen that our merchant fleet would increase in two 
short years, from 1918 to 1920, by nine and a half mil- 
lion tons. Under the stress of war, vessels were built 
of wood and of concrete as well as of steel. The old- 
time shipwright, that wizard with the adze and topmaul, 
suddenly found himself called upon to impart his skill 
to hundreds of novices who had never seen a large vessel 
before. The wooden hulls were afloat in hundreds by 
the end of the War, destined to swing idly at their 
anchors in forlorn squadrons, but they had served a pur- 
pose. Said Admiral Benson of the Shipping Board: 
“We built many ships that were undesirable, to be sure, 
but they were only like the shots that were fired on the 
battlefields and never hit anything. It was inevitable 
some ships of this character should be turned out, but 
in the main the fleet built during the great emergency 
was good and favorably compared with foreign ships.” 

The notable fact was that we had men competent to 
build and handle all kinds of ships, and that such men 
were far more numerous than most people would have 
supposed. Men were found, as well, to repair the Ger- 


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252 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


man ships interned in our ports, and to handle them 
with surpassing skill. These liners had had their boilers 
deliberately ruined by dry-firing and important parts of 
their machinery had been destroyed. The great Levia- 
than had been the Vaterland, largest ship in all the world, 
and she was making round trips, to France and back, 
all through the summer of 1918. For months she moved 
what came to an average of 400 men a day across the 
ocean. The Dutch vessels in our ports supplied more 
than half a million tons of available shipping, while 
other ships—British, Scandinavian, or Japanese—were 
chartered besides. From the Pacific a number of vessels 
were rushed through the Panama Canal to the Atlantic 
side, and the coastwise and lake fleets supplied a quantity 
of useful tonnage. Thus, before the ships of the Emer- 
gency Fleet began to come off the ways, might be found 
specimens of ship-construction in our merchant marine 
typical of many nations, and adapted to various pur- 
poses. 

Starting with this great fleet, it became imperative 


/ to add new shipping out of our own national resources, 


to the utmost limit of our power. We can all remember 
the slogans, “ships will win the war,” “a bridge of ships 
to France,” and the rest. When, at the date of the 
Armistice, there were along our coasts no less than 
384 centers of ship-construction with 1284 launching 
ways, more than double the number existing in the rest 
of the entire world, it might fairly be claimed that a 
thing without precedent in history had been accom- 
plished. 

With the close of the War it became necessary to take 
stock of our shipping: to separate the vessels which 


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FLEET OF THE WAR-TIME ase 


might profitably be used on the trade routes of the ocean 
from those which, built under the inexorable urge of 
war, with its hurry and waste were not of types adapted 
to peace-time purposes. The fleet of the former class, 
containing hundreds of fine modern vessels, gives us 
ample ground for legitimate pride. Taken together with 
the admirable personnel set afloat during the war-effort, 
it proved beyond cavil that seafaring skill, equal to any 
conceivable demand, still resided in the American people. 

Even those who are but superficially informed about 
our manufactures know that the principle of quantity 
production by standardized methods is a native develop- 
ment. <A’ fabricated product, whatever its purpose, is 
dissected and analyzed; unnecessary details are sup- 
pressed; parts are made interchangeable. The various 
elements of the article, often made at points widely sep- 
arated—wherever, for one reason or another, the con- 
ditions are most favorable—are brought together and 
assembled into the complete product; a utensil, a vehicle, 
a farm implement, for instance. 

It was the application of this principle that brought 
about the “fabricated ship,” our most distinctive war- 
time innovation in marine construction, From the de- 
sign of a hull was eliminated every trace of rule-of- 
thumb, or guesswork, as far as was humanly possible. 
Groups of ships, on given dimensions, were built to re- 
semble one another as closely, let us say, as Ford auto- 
mobiles, as trade-marked oil-stoves, or as railroad cars 
for special purposes. Type-ships were designed, from 
which features handed down from sailing days, such as 
the curving sheer from stem to stern, or the “crown” 
of the decks, were omitted, as being unnecessary. Then 


256 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


dies, jigs, templates, patterns, presses—all the varied 
appliances required in the fashioning of the many parts 
of a ship—were put in construction, so that at points 
hundreds of miles apart shafts, engines, hull-plates, 
structural members, identical down to the last bolt or 
flange and ready to be fitted together like a colossal sec- 
tional puzzle could be produced in numbers, and for- 
warded in proper sequence and co-ordination to the ship- 
yards. At Hog Island, at Newark Bay, at a dozen busy 
centers along the coast long rows of towering hulls rose 
like magic to the thundering chorus of the riveting 
gangs. In the fitting-out basins, ships were ranked in 
tiers reaching for miles, from which, like steel shuttles, 
the completed units steamed away, to be instantly re- 
placed by others exactly like them. 

A single contract called in one instance for 150 vessels 
of 5350 dead-weight tons each. Of these 118 were 
completed and delivered to the Shipping Board within 
two years, and the balance of 32 were then finished for 
private operators. These have proven to be sturdy and 
dependable vessels, whose ocean mileage has run well 
into the millions. The stark severity of these fabricated 
models, stripped of every vestige of none-essential de- 
tail and free from marine coquetry, is not without its 
interest as an expression of incisive efficiency. 

The time required in the construction of a steel ship, 
which had been an affair of a year or more before the 
War, was reduced in many cases to sixty days. The 
Tuckahoe was delivered teady to load cargo in thirty- 
seven. At the close of the War the Hog Island plant 
was ready to turn out two complete steel cargo vessels 
or troopships of 7500 tons each week. 


FLEET OF THE WAR-TIME 257 


Vulcan and Thor might well have stood, over- 
whelmed, in the shipyards where the mighty arm of 
Uncle Sam wrought such wonders. In tons, in train- 
loads, in literal mountains of steel, of brass, of strange 
and novel metals and alloys unknown till our day, the 
materials flowed into the roaring hives along the coast. 
Great sheets of steel, marked from patterns laid out in 
the mold-lofts to show outlines and rivet-holes, passed 
through the shearing machines that trimmed them like 
paper, through rollers that fashioned them to shape. 
Frames of angle or channel section, heated in oil-burning 
furnaces and bent to exact curves by gangs of brawny 
men, were punched with rivet-holes to take the plates. 
Along the keel-blocks sloping to the water the titanic 
skeletons rose under the shadows of towering cranes, 
where the riveters, each gang with its portable furnace 
tended by a heater boy, toiled in the deafening clamor 
of pneumatic hammers. 

In the boiler shops the plates of special steel were 
rolled, fitted, and assembled, with their countless tubes 
cut to exact length, and secured by scores of stay-bolts. 
Here hydraulic plungers, under tons of pressure, 
squashed the red-hot rivets like butter, and machines as 
high as a two-story house handled a great boiler like a 
plaything while the drills ate into it and the flanges 
were turned and fastened. 

Other structures housed the machine shops, where 
great bed-plates of cast-iron were planed and drilled, 
cylinders machined in the grasp of heavy tools, shafting 
turned on mighty lathes—pistons, connecting-rods, and 
all the rest wrought at the same time. Here were mill- 
ing machines with cutters of eighteen-inch diameter, 


258 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


boring mills with tables ten feet broad, lathes turning 
off spiral chips an inch thick with cutting tools at a 
dull red heat. And the assembled engines, looming up 
high over the heads of the mechanics, were tested, 
checked, and measured with the last degree of accuracy. 

Further on came also the workers in brass and 
bronze, making ventilators, binnacle boxes, dials, bells, 
all manner of fittings. Others, working with the oxy- 
acetylene torch, cut into metal as if it were cheese, 
welded and joined it under the dazzling flame. 

And so, with all these men and many others, all striv- 
ing at high pressure—electricians, joiners, pipe-fitters, 
riggers, painters, and so on—at one time 625,000 of 
them—the ships grew and were launched, and steamed 
away to their tasks. 

But ships need men to run them, and men had to be 
found by the thousands. How were they to be trained 
for a trade so new to them—a trade with a long tradi- 
tion of sea-habit behind it, whose followers stood apart, 
by general consent, from all other classes of labor? 

There was but one thing to do—to ring full steam 
ahead and jettison the traditions—for the time being, 
anyway. ‘There were plenty of young men available, 
and they soon demonstrated that the right kind of Ameri- 
can had had it in him to make good aboard ship after 
a few months of systematic training. They were taught 
first the elements of deck and engine-room work, from 
reading the compass-card, handling and repairing the 
gear and tackle, swinging a slice-bar or watching a 
water-gauge, to lookout work, to tending winches or 
more complex machines. They learned that Bill with 
his oil-can, or Jack with his boat-hook, has to use his 


FLEET OF THE WAR-TIME 260 


wits in his work, however simple it may be, and they 
kept cheerful while they learned it. The end of the War 
saw thousands of them doing useful service at sea. 
Schools for watch-officers and engine-room assistants, 
taking at the start only high-school or college graduates, 
were so successful that when their pupils had made a 


ONE OF THE FABRICATED SHIPS OF 5350 DEAD-WEIGHT TONS, WHICH 
HAVE PROVEN STURDY AND DEPENDABLE IN ALL SEAS. 


voyage or two they were placed regularly on duty. 
Many of them were actually in charge of the bridge 
off-soundings within seven months from their start. 

Out of the hurry and confusion of the early days of 
the War there soon emerged a degree of order, and a 
body of experience was gathered. With the tan of sun 
and wind, and the habit of the sea, these young men 
took on steadiness and self-reliance, and they showed 


260 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


that the grandsons of the lads who had commanded ships 
in their twenties, so many years ago, had not lost the 
spirit of adaptability to the seaman’s calling. | 

In one case a large sailing ship, the Arapahoe, was 
manned by twenty-eight of these young sailors, and her 
captain reported on his return to San Francisco from 
Manila, after plenty of rough weather on the voyage, 
that he had the finest crew that he had ever known on 
a sailing ship. Many other old and experienced ship- 
masters expressed their entire satisfaction and even en- 
thusiasm at the work done, on long voyages, by lads 
trained in only a few months, under the urge of war. 

When hostilities came to a sudden close, the country 
could feel, considering the achievements of its builders 
and its seamen, that its nautical prestige had been 
worthily upheld. In spite of waste and unavoidable mis- 
takes an impressive demonstration had been made of 
maritime power. ‘Thousands of young men, many of 
them from interior parts of the country, had been em- 
ployed on the ocean, had learned its ways, to spread their 
knowledge among people who had previously given little 
thought to the sea. Ships of every conceivable sort had 
carried the flag into ports where it had not been shown 
for many long years, and were in being to keep it flying 
on the Seven Seas. Along the docks of the great sea- 
board cities, where we had grown unused to the sight 
of American ships in the foreign trade, lay splendid new 
vessels, loading or discharging cargoes from far-off 
lands, with the starry ensign at the taffrail. 

We shall try to give an idea, in the following chapter, 
of some of the interesting ships brought out during and 
after the War, and how they are likely to be utilized. 


CHAPTER XV 
THE TRADE-SHIPS OF TODAY 


HE end of the War, with its uncertainties and ex- 
periments, found our merchant fleet busily em- 
ployed, but it was obvious enough that many of the ships 
were ill-adapted to any but very special purposes. The 
small vessels built on the Lakes and sent through the 
Welland Canal, the wooden ships, the older craft that 
had been revamped for the emergency—all the tonnage 
of similar classes, enormous in quantity, was hardly fitted 
for the general maritime trade. The merchant shipping 
of the whole world was, and still is, tossing in the turbu- 
lent wake of the World War, and its future courses can- 
not yet be charted with entire confidence. Meanwhile, 
a number of the vessels of emergency origin have been 
disposed of, or are being utilized in various ways, and 
laudable efforts are being made to employ the others. 
After setting aside this tonnage (always in the hope 
that uses may be found for it), an imposing fleet re- 
mained of about a thousand modern steel sea-going ves~* 
sels, in the hands of the Shipping Board. To these 
might be added the German and Austrian ships seized | 
during the War, and those returned to private owners — 
—in all, some eight million tons of deep-sea shipping 
There have since been launched a number of vessels 


261 


262 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


embodying the newest and best ideas in marine con- 
struction. Among them are passenger and cargo liners, 
tank ships, oil-and-ore carriers, motor ships as well as 
vessels with turbine or triple-expansion engines. 

Notable examples of these new ships may be found in 
the 502 and 535 classes (the figures refer to length in 
feet between perpendiculars), a number of which have 
been placed in service on both oceans. They are com-} 
bined cargo and passenger ships of more than twenty | 
thousand tons displacement, handsomely fitted and 
equipped with “geared turbine” engines. As the steam 
turbine is most efficient when turning at a very high 
speed, it is provided, in engines of this type, with re- 
ducing gears applied to the propeller shaft. To drive 
a propeller wheel beyond a certain rather low rotative 
speed merely causes it to spin, so that the inert water 
against which it acts can no longer follow it. It does 
not get a good grip to push against. Its turning rate 
is therefore reduced by the introduction of gearing be- 
tween the turbine itself and the propeller shaft. These 
ships are given a distinctive appearance by the “king- 
posts” with which they are fitted, which replace the masts 
and cargo derricks seen on older vessels. 

While the converted German liners cannot be regarded 
as representative of American ship-building, the greatest 
skill has been applied to their reconditioning. The 
America and George Washington would be splendid ad- 
ditions to any fleet, and the great Leviathan is by far 
the largest vessel that has ever flown our flag. The 
difficult undertaking of getting them into operation on 
the North Atlantic deserves the interest of all who hope 
to see our country again properly represented, as it 


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LRADE-SHIPS OF TODAY, 265 


ought to be, in the trade. Conditions have not always 
seemed encouraging for the building of large, fast pas- 
senger liners in recent years even apart from the influ- 
ence of the War. Indeed, there are those in the field 
who have felt that the thing has been overdone—that 
the rivalry between the competitors has led them too far 
in the launching of enormous and costly vessels. From 
this point of view our new American ships would seem 
to have been designed on sound principles. 

The great publicity given to the fancy ships, dwell- 
ing as it does, on their enormous size and luxurious ac- 
commodations, must not be allowed to confuse our minds 
regarding the importance of the cargo vessel. It was 
on ships of this class that our former maritime strength 
rested, as does the strength of all the seafaring nations 
of today. Let us remember that the business of our 
ships will have to be largely based on the distribution 
of our manufactured goods abroad, a very different 
problem from the shipment of bulk cargoes of raw ma- 
terial, foodstuffs, and so on, as has been the case with 
so much of our export trade in the past. This can 
never be done by foreign vessels in the same national 
spirit as by our own. An American ship of up-to-date 
construction, with her complex machinery and navigat- 
ing equipment, is herself a striking example of our 
manufacturing skill, The flag at her taffrail publishes 
the origin of her cargo, and leads the mind of the for- 
eigner toward the land which it represents. In the old 
days the hailing-ports of our ships were identified in 
the minds of the people with whom we traded, with cer- 
tain goods which they needed, or preferred, and which 
they knew would be found aboard of ships from those 


266 THE. TALE OF, OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


ports. Something of the sort must be the aim of our 
future foreign sea commerce. In out-of-the-way parts of 
the world, in seaports which have perhaps been growing 
as the development of countries behind them has pro- 
gressed, in those lands where the changing picture of 
world-trade takes on new aspects under the influence of 
modern demand, lie fields whose profits may yet surpass 
the golden yields of the fragrant outports in the days 
of our stout old Indiamen. If we are to share in these 
profits we shall need all kinds of ships, with the men to 
manage them. At present we have the ships and are 
well-equipped to build more when they are required. To 
the vessels of burden, the “floating delivery-wagons” of 
the fleet, we must look for the real basis of a healthy sea 
trade. 

Although the great wartime yards at Hog Island did 
not get into their stride until the Armistice came sud- 
denly about, the ships launched there have been coming 
into service as fast as employment could be found for 
them. The comment on these ships, of 7500 dead- 
weight tons, with geared turbine engines, has been de- 
cidedly favorable, since they have been put to the test 
of operation. 

Somebody has compared a steel ship to a bridge, with 
a steel sheathing built around it. A British engineer, 
Mr. Isherwood, has found a method of designing the in- 
side bridge-frame so that it requires less weight of metal, 
is much stronger lengthwise, and leaves more room for 
cargo, than was possible under former practise. There 
are times in the winter gales in mid-ocean, when the 
water appears to rise in walls ahead and astern, so that 
the ship has to span the gap between. It may readily 


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A CRAMP-BUILT MorToR-sHIP OF 12,375 TONS. ABOVE, A SECTIONAL 
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TRADE-SHIPS OF TODAY 269 


be realized that an immense strain is put on the structure 
at such times, and that the need of strength in the fore- 
and-aft framing can hardly be exaggerated. The Isher- 
wood system is employed in the Hog Island ships, and 
in many others of our new vessels as well. 

In previous chapters, dealing with different phases of 
our sea story, some emphasis has been given to those 
distinctive features which appeared in our ships under 
the influence of local conditions or special requirements, 
features which came to give our vessels a character of 
their own. They were, of course, applied on the lines 
of proven principles which, taken in their entirety, made 
up the common heritage of sea experience of all the civ- 
ilized peoples. Our forefathers adapted, and often im- 
proved upon, such new ideas as might be recommended 
not only by their own experiments, but by those of other 
countries, Just as the British had learned from the 
French, and the latter from the Dutch, and our early 
builders from all three, so, in turn, our own vessels were 
studied in the days of their supremacy, by builders in 
foreign lands. It is by the application of similar methods 
that Germany and then Japan, have developed their 
shipping in late years. 

This adaptive process still continues, more active in 
these days of close internatiohal relations than ever be- 
fore. Thus such features as the turbine and Diesel en- 
gines, and the Isherwood, and Gatewood plans of hull- 
construction appear almost immediately in our ships, and 
in the ships of other countries, once their success has 
been demonstrated in the country of their origin. Our 
American constructors do not hesitate to apply new 


270 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


methods which promise to yield results of value, wher- 
ever they may originate. 

Accepting, however, the fact that our new deep-sea 
steamships, like those of other maritime peoples, embody 
features which have originated in different lands, we 
may reasonably expect that our vessels will continue to 
contribute, in due proportion, to the general fund of 
maritime knowledge. The development of standardiza- 
tion in our fabricated ships, the electric drive aboard our 
recent war vessels, the Great Lakes methods of cargo- 
handling are instances in point. The clean-cut silhou- 
ettes of our new ships bear an aspect expressive of their 
affinity with our locomotives, our automobiles, and other 
machines, clearly American in character. 

The constant search for economy and efficiency has 
led to a further application of electricity in our new 
ships than in those of other nations. In designing the 
propelling machinery on several of the newer battleships, 
the engines have been so arranged as to furnish current 
for motors directly connected with the propellers instead 
of themselves turning the propeller-shafts. As these 
engine-units, termed turbo-electric generators, can be 
placed anywhere in the ship that may be most conve- 
nient, there need be no long shafts to break as such 
shafts sometimes do, the motors themselves being located 
down close to the screws. This method of propulsion 
is already beginning to appear in merchant vessels, the 
Diesel engine, as well as the turbine, being employed to 
furnish power for the motors in some recent instances. 
In the application of electricity to the auxiliaries re- 
quired, such as deck-winches, windlasses, or steering- 


¢ 


TRADE-SHIPS OF TODAY 271 


gear, our constructors are in the front rank of modern 
progress. 

Among our new ships are to be found a great many 
“tankers” for the carrying of oil in bulk. Vessels of 
this type are internally divided by bulkheads, running 
across as well as lengthwise, into steel boxes or tanks, 


- 


A “535” IN THE PANAMA CANAL. 


and are fitted with pumping apparatus for loading or 
discharging the oil. A further development of the bulk- 
cargo carrier is found in the ore-and-oil ship, which can 
stow a full load of either commodity, permitting in many 
instances a cargo both out and back. Vessels of these 
classes are easily recognized, as they carry their engines 


ay 


272 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


and funnels near the stern, very much like the Great 
Lakes ships referred to in a former chapter. 

A type of vessel appearing recently in our merchant 
marine is the large motor ship, an excellent example of 
which is the William Penn, of 12,375 tons, built at 
Cramp’s. She is driven by two six-cylinder Burmeister 
& Wain Diesel engines, of Danish design. Her fuel- 
oil consumption on her trials was but one-third that of 
similar turbine installations. The Kennecott, another 
motor ship having American-built Diesel engines, made 
two consecutive voyages between New York and Puget 
Sound without once stopping her engines at sea. A 
special interest attaches to the motor ships now appear- 
ing, for their partisans do not hesitate to claim that 
this type is to be the vessel of the future. 

We have more than once, in the course of our mari- 
time history, been able to feel that the coasting-trade, 
open only to American ships, has provided an invaluable 
resource for our sea-borne interests. Since the opening 
of the Panama Canal this fact is again being demon- 
strated. The intercoastal traffic is employing a fine fleet 
of ocean freighters, many of which also participate in 
the foreign trade. The new 11,000-ton motor ships Cali- 
forman and Missourian of the American-Hawaiian Line, 
are interesting examples of these through-canal carriers, 
available on occasion for voyages of any length.* 

As in former days the California clippers were made 
possible under the coasting-trade laws, so in these days 
of steam and the Panama Canal many of our best ships 
ply between American ports on the two coasts, and may 


1 All tonnages given in this chapter, unless otherwise qualified, 
refer to “dead-weight tons”’—the weight of cargo, fuel, and stores 
which a ship will carry, in long tons of 2240 lbs. 


TRADE-SHIPS OF TODAY 273 


sooner or later find the Philippines included under these 
laws, as are the Hawaiian Islands. It will probably take 
twenty-five years more, at least, for the Canal to demon- 
strate its full effect on the sea routes of the world. At 
present ships are using it for voyages to the Far East, 
to the west coast of South America, to Australasia from 


AN OIL-FIRED SHIP BEING SUPPLIED WITH FUEL IN A FEW Hours 
FROM A TANKER. 


the Atlantic Coast, and from the Pacific Coast to Europe, 
as well as for the intercoastal trade. In the transisth- 
mian business are to be found examples of all the newer 
types of vessels with which I have dealt, fine American 
ships of classes undreamed of a few years ago. It is 
to be hoped that routes will be worked out permitting 


274 THE TALE OF OUR MERCHANT SHIPS 


of cargoes both out and back in order that this trade 
may become stabilized. Cargoes in both directions are 
required for shipping to be profitable. 

In the olden days of our seafaring the New England 
seaports, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, sent 
out their ships to trade in the Orient and the Pacific, 
sometimes providing them with instructions that had to 
be disregarded when their captains and supercargoes en- 
countered conditions that could not have been foreseen 
at the home ports. I have dwelt somewhat on this phase 
of the old-time trading in the chapter on Salem, as being 
typical of that period. But the day has long since passed 
when a shipmaster could be permitted to jettison his 
orders. The problems of a captain now lie in the ap- 
plication of a thorough technical training and the han- 
dling of his subordinates. On a passenger ship he must 
represent his company with dignity and act as an agree- 
able host as well. He has under him specialists in engi- 
neering, in radio, and the other electrical branches, to- 
gether with the navigating personnel. He is charged 
with the responsibility of directing a complex floating 
power plant for the transportation of a cargo worth 
perhaps several million dollars, and with the safety of 
hundreds of lives. All questions of destination, of time 
required for voyages, of loading drafts, port regulations, 
and so on are worked out in the greatest detail before- 
hand at the home offices. Demands on the captain’s 
versatility and resource are quite sufficient, given the 
traditional uncertainty of the sea, to call for character 
and intelligence in the highest degrees. His career may 
fairly be ranked with that of the manager of a great 
industrial enterprise in standing and importance. 


TRADE-SHIPS OF TODAY 276 


It is equally reasonable that the attainments of the 
marine engineer should receive due credit. He is very 
apt to be an educated man with a technical degree, a 
slide-rule under his hand, and a knowledge of physics 
that would do credit to a university professor. 

The merchant seaman merits the attention and sym- 
pathy of all, for he is more than a mere toiler for his 
wage. He appears, in ports abroad, as a part of the 
vessel to which he belongs, included in its close and 
special unity. Each ship’s mission is international. This 
is proclaimed by the flag at its taffrail, and those who 
have dealings with the crews are influenced in their judg- 
ments by their contact with them. 

If the notion still lingers here and there that ships 
must be manned by men who are wastrels ashore and 
thriftless wanderers on the face of the waters, it has 
disappeared among those familiar with the deck and 
engine-room personnel of our vessels. Many crews com- 
pare more than favorably with the workers in some of 
our great industrial centers. It is to be hoped that 
means may be found of adjusting the labor problems that 
arise with fairness to all those who work at sea, so that 
deck, bridge and engine-room, home and foreign man- | 
agement, building and repair plants may all strive to- 
gether to keep our flag afloat, and to carry on the my 
tradition of our nautical history. . 


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